Illusion: A Tale of the Mind (PC) Review

The core concept is so impressive, with a young girl named Emma being driven around various locations, interacting with her surroundings, manipulating angles, light sources, different shapes, and even coloured switches to help progress to the next area. Rather than this merely being a one stage and done situation, though, the developer has interwoven a story that is...well, somewhat intriguing and plenty confusing in equal measure. Emma is somehow in her father's psyche, where another chap resides as the main evil that is trying to steal away mother/wife and cease Emma's existence. It carries the action along well enough for the most part, but there are times where it gets super creepy with a large, scary eyeball covered in what looks like tar chasing after Emma on several occasions, and then it goes a bit too far to the other extreme, becoming rather tiresome as more exposition on the relationship triangle element is provided, and sadly the father's accent is such a thick French one that relying on the subtitles is necessary at times.

Those story elements are where Illusion: A Tale of the Mind stumbles slightly. The rest of the game is wonderful, from the presentation to the clever gameplay tricks, although it does also sometimes rely too heavily on coloured switch hitting towards the end, plus there is a frustrating chapter that revolves around Emma's little floating rabbit companion alone, merely zipping around a maze-like area, hitting more switches, and even just going through endless doors in a catch-Emma scenario. What was originally a highly engaging puzzle adventure, and still manages to keep its head above the water, does become a bit of a chore as time passes. Thankfully, everything is over at around the four-hour mark, so it does not outstay its welcome by much.

Focusing on rotating objects to cast shadows to form a particular object, changing the orientation of seemingly random paraphernalia to craft devices to help out Emma's spirit form out, and even some smart applications for boss battles, whereby panels must be shuffled around to allow lights to be spun around, tweaking ever so slightly to cast light upon the darkness - these are the areas where Illusion blows your mind. Kudos to the developer for trying to bring some emotional investment to the table, but it bogs itself down too much on that front to be a worthwhile addition, instead proving to be the main aspect that hold this experience back from greatness.