Showing Tonight: Mindhunters Incident
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After falling asleep in the cinema, you wake up in a movie you’ve seen so many times before. Use your detective skills to solve the mystery of the missing film crew and finish the movie. There are strange sound waves that appear to be keeping everyone trapped in this cryptic world.
Maybe these sound waves are your way out! Explore the diverse world of Shutterville, inspired by horror B-movies.
- More than 80 game scenes
- 21 mini games
- New silhouette matching mode
- Original soundtrack
Steam User 21
Showing Tonight: Mindhunters Incident is a Point and Click game with some Hidden Object scenes and undertones, created by Phime Studio. I say this is more a P&C game because really, there’s only about 3ish HoG scenes, the rest I wouldn’t consider to be exactly hidden object per se.
In this game you take the role of a man who falls asleep watching the movie “They Ate My Clapper”, and thus wakes up in this movie world, tasked with finding the missing crew. To be honest, while the story on paper sounds good, in game it was rather confusing. Alien artifacts, mind powers and mind control, horror? I’m not sure if it’s going for paranormal (which was my original assumption) or something else, and by the end of the game I’m still unsure of it.
The game has various chapters, all interconnected in locations (you’re not locked out of any of the areas), and a final bonus chapter which you can only access by completing the entire game. It’d be nice if they’d put an option to play the bonus chapter separately from the main story, and if they had asked/warned you about playing it instead of tossing you into it right after the main story’s finale, leaving you even more confused.
That said, and despite the occasional item appearing out of what I felt was thin air, the game was fairly logical. Meaning for most things you needed actual tools (a shovel for digging something up) rather than finding an oblique way to go about it.
The puzzles varied in complexity, some really easy, some much harder, some seemed to be more trial and error than anything, which was a bit disappointing. The main ‘thing’ of the game seemed to be the silhouette puzzles, in which you were to match an item with its silhouette via turning it around with arrows. It wasn’t too difficult, but after the first two or three times it lost its novelty and having to do them in nearly all the important puzzles got quite bothersome, to the point where some I just skipped to move along the story faster.
On the puzzles that require some note to complete, while you can’t hold the note up at the same time of the puzzle, accessing it is still easy and not as bothersome as in other HoG games. You also don’t have to wait to collect every piece of a puzzle before you put it in its place, which is quite nice.
My only real complaint was the jukebox puzzle, in which either I was missing something obvious or you weren’t really given a hint on when you were sort of heading in the right direction with it, which ended up making it quite frustrating for me. It was probably user error, but there you have it.
On the other hand, Mindhunters also had a couple mini-games which were fun to play.
The sound effects and music can get a tad repetitive, but they’re relatively nice and seem to fit the game okay. The voice acting, however, left a lot to be desired, even if they aren’t precisely the worst I’ve heard.
The graphics are quite nice, particularly the detailed backgrounds; the animations aren’t too bad, even if they could be a bit more fluid. Some of the scenes could benefit from a bit more research on how things look – for instance the driving scenes in which you saw the people from the front inside the car.
I rather liked the quick travel map, even if I wished each section would have had its sub-sections as quick travel as well.
All in all, I quite enjoyed my playthrough and would certainly recommend it to HoG and adventure fans, even with the small downsides. I’ll be looking forward to see what else Phime comes up with in the future.
* Key provided by the developer in exchange for an honest review
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Steam User 4
This game should come with a medical warning. It's a 99 cent acid trip with a significant chance of a brain damaging freak out.
It was so nonsensical, my jaw dropped several times when I finally figured out the next random sequence of object interactions that drove the "plot" forward. At first, this was frustrating, but then it got funny - really funny - laugh out loud funny as the game moved on (the use for the piranha wins the prize for absurdity). I have completed the game and its bizarre epilogue, and I still have no idea what was going on. I've got to believe this was intentional. It's as if the developers took the half-baked ideas and glaring plot holes from a dozen different low budget Sci-Fi movies and used a random number generator to assign them a position in the game's "script". This isn't merely a language translation problem (though there were several of these throughout the game) this is total lack of pyschological coherence problem, and it is (intentionally?/unintentionally?) hilarious like an Ed Wood movie.
I am recommending the game only to people who have read the above description of my playthrough and thought - "I've got to see this fever dream." If you read the description and had any other reaction, I do not recommend this game.
Steam User 15
"They Ate My Clapper" is the name of the movie our hero Nate goes to see so often the cashier knows him by name. I do not know how or why the developers, phime studios LLC, came up with that name for a movie, but for some reason it reminds me of every zombie movie and game ever made. (They Ate My Brains immediately came to my mind.) This is especially true when the first thing our movie herione, Gabriella, says to Nate is "The Mindhunters are after us." No zombies though, unless being zombie-fied by mind control counts.
Story: Our hero, Nate, goes to watch the movie "They Ate My Clapper" quite often. One evening he falls asleep and is transported into that particular movie's world. There he meets Gabriella, a detective of sorts, looking to stop the Mindhunter and find/rescue the movie's crew who are making the movie "They Ate My Clapper." (Paradox, anyone?)
Gameplay: In a word: challenging. This is more of a point and click game then a hidden object game, and full of logic. Everything is logical, the gameplay objectives and goals, and the puzzles. It is the most logical game I have ever played, in fact. No turning screws with a coin, there is actually a screwdriver! It is also quite challenging, and only the most ... insane? would try this game on expert the first time though. Some of the things that need to found are quite hard to find and I generally do not use game hints but for this game I highly recommend them when stuck. (Or use this game guide I found after I played -
Despite some quite subtle paradoxes, the game itself plays out as a mystery, and not as the movie plot though that is debatable. There 7 chapters total, the last being what could be called "the bonus chapter" and 8 locations plus 1 location added for chapter seven (but only accessible through another location). Each location is then divided into scenes which vary in number. For example, the first location has 6 scenes. There a map, a very nice 3D map for fast travel, but it is not really needed until chapter seven.
The Hidden Object aspect: There are only 3 actual word list Hidden Object scenes in the first 6 chapters, and 2 in chapter seven. What the hidden object scenes are, are silhouette hidden objects or SHOs as the developer calls them. (6 in the main storyline.) This is very different from the usual standard word list. A SHO is a group of pictures that must be located in the scene and once clicked on a "shadow"/silhouette appears behind the object. The gamer then must rotate the object to match the "shadow"/silhouette. This is quite the challenge, especially for those like me that lack skill with spatial reasoning. Also about 5 clicks or so into rotating the object a red box appears asking if you want to skip. Hmmm? I thought after a few of those, these little puzzles can be solved in less than 5 clicks?? It is true (look in the guide if you do not believe). Most, if not all, are solvable in 2 clicks. (They would have to be since 3 achievements (based on 1 minute time) are given for these SHOs.)
Puzzles: My, oh my, and OMG. This game's version of mini-puzzles include fixing a car engine, a driving test, check mating a king, geography, a crossword slider, launching a rocket and not 1 but 2 arcade games. Absolutely nothing standard here! I definitely suggest reading the game instructions.
In conclusion, one of the best games I have ever played and well worth full price. I did get a free key from the developers, phime studios, (which I was very surprised about) for supporting their Greenlight effort. Even if I had not received a key I would have still bought this game. If they ever make more of this series I am definitely going to buy them, (and phime studios might since the game ended with 'To be continued'.)
Steam User 7
This is one of those games where I wish we could leave neutral reviews. As a hidden object game, its sub-par. As a point and click puzzle game, in my opinion its average.
First, dont expect very many hidden object scenes. There are very few (I think I counted 3 or 4 and they are repeated). There are however, a different type of puzzle where you have a silhouette of an object, and you need to spin the object to match its silhouette. Its different, but personally, I think they went overboard considering we only had a small handful of actual hidden object scenes and puzzles.
That said, the story wasnt terrible for one of these games. It kept me interested enough to keep playing even if I was disappointed in the lack of hidden object scenes and puzzles. I wish the devs added an option to play the bonus chapter seperately from the main game. The main game adds on a pretty satisfying point, but getting thrown automatically into the bonus was confusing. The actual story of the bonus chapter was disappointing and confusing compared to the main story.
Audio wasnt bad, I like the music, but the sound effects audio got irritating after awhile. The speaker noises were obnoxious, and you had to solve multiple puzzles to be able to turn them off and get some peace. Maybe that was the point. Some of the puzzles had bugged audio, so I highly recommend adjusting the volume through your volume mixer, over the ingame volume sliders.
As far as bug, only one I found was some of the puzzles ignoring the ingame volume slider (mostly any puzzle that made any "click" noises).
Achievements werent too hard to get, but you almost need to look up a guide (or play and take screenshots and solution notes in the first playthrough) to get the "Shade Vampire" achievement. To get that, you need to do all 6 of the silhouette puzzles in under 1 minute.
Overall its worth a playthrough if you got it in a bundle or on sale, but certainly not for full price, and not if you are looking for lots of hidden object scenes. It isnt bad as a puzzle game, but its hard to recommend as a hidden object game.
Steam User 4
Classic HOS game, but for one thing : silhouette HOS .. they look like HOS but you actually end up manipulating objects forward and backward, moving them from left to right.. untill they fit the perfect shape to a certain angle. I found these quickly boring. Some achievements will require you to accomplish them under a minute.
As most games of the genre, the story isn't ambitious but it gets the job done, driving you from many nice and somewhat easy puzzles to few classic HO scenes and some silhouette HO thingy.
I still recommend it, especially if on sales.
One big pro : The more or less chip music of the retro arcade video game "Flap for Life" (a game in the game) with many chip sounds of 8-bit music. That was a good and enjoying surprise!
Steam User 12
Good Hidden Object Game, puzzles are not too easy and you can skip them if they are too hard for you. Graphic looks good and Story is okay. There are also 3 ways to play (easy, normal, expert). For peoples who like this genre I can recommand this game.
Language is only english but its easy to solve without knowing perfect english, (at least on easy and normal)
My rate for this game 7 from 10 Points
Pro:
3 ways to play
graphic
music
story
a lot of puzzels
Contra:
puzzels repeat often
no punishment if you click too much
hints recharge to fast on higher levels
playtime seems to be a bit short
Steam User 4
Art: 7/10
Story: 3/10
Puzzles: 5/10
Overall: 5/10
Recommending the game but only get it on a sale or, even better, through a bundle with other games that will perform better and make it worth the price.
The game announces itself as a Hidden Object game but there are only 3 puzzles based on that. The key puzzle that makes the game advance is silhoutte matching (the achivements related to those puzzles are the only ones I've yet to unlock) and point&click. The plot is... Probably better to ignore, it means you'll probably get lost and need a guide or something but it's not like even if you pay attention the game will tell you much of what to do or where to go.