Mindcell

2025-02-03

I had "Mindcell" on my Nintendo Switch's wishlist for a while now, wondering if a game that cheap can be any good. In the meantime, I found out it's a port of a mobile game, which fits the handheld nature of Switch. Long story short, the game got discounted and to the price where I could buy it completely from the points I had. Now, for free, I might give it a shot.

More notes to follow.

2025-02-06

The game looks and controls better than I was worried. The setting looks like taken out of "Doom 3" (techbase strictly; as far as I know, there is nothing supernatural here). The fights are funny and our character regenerates health and collects better weapons like Michael Douglas' D-Fens in "Falling." The only voice acting is in Russian, and one actor was extremely reading from the paper with no effort whatsoever.

2025-02-07

I got out of the base and to a dystopian city of the future. The vibe reminds me heavily of the early 2000s games (also due to some emptiness of streets due to only the necessary actors), but with more polygons. The character animation is actually really good.

Another note goes to music, a mix of electronic and live percussion, I think? I even tried to find it, but it looks like it wasn't published anywhere. Big mistake.

I can appreciate various nods to William Gibson. There is Dr. Gibson, Straylight Labs, and Becker is a fat guy with a mechanical limb (Ratz). The plot begins to remind me of Johnny Mnemonic because our character, Seth, is on his trip to find his memories which are stored somewhere else.

The melee fights remind me of "Mad Max" (but simpler), and those weapons have the approach like from "The Legend of Zelda," where they don't have ammo but they get destroyed after some time. "Mindcell" shows us how many hits we have left. There is a variety of them: knives, firefighter's axes, pistons, and even a prosthetic leg.

When in low health, I can abandon the fight and start running around to regenerate it.

Then, there are guns. I am not allowed to pick up shotguns yet (they're "locked"), but I have a pistol. The game allows gyroaiming (even if the default sensitivity is a joke; but it can be adjusted), so this is more Zelda-like in my experience.

So far, I am impressed that a port of game designed primarily for mobile devices works so well with a gamepad and on a big TV. And all that from the collected points, so basically for free (but even the normal price of almost 5 euros seems like a good deal).

2025-02-13

Later, the game got more shootable weapons: a submachine gun, a rifle, and a shotgun. The submachine gun, if shot without a break, goes all over the place and is practically unusable, so I had to shoot in short bursts. The rifle I didn't use almost at all because I found the shotgun, which became my number 1 weapon.

The story got a couple of twists, and a cliffhanger, but I'm not expecting a sequel.

I also realised that one of the characters, residing in virtual reality conscience, is named NM, which must be a nod to Neuromancer. Nice.

The whole plot is like a short story, which is a love letter to William Gibson and cyberpunk. And quite a lot for such a short gameplay.

I really liked it.