HTML - Accidental Mind [v3.5] [Myscra]

Lot of bugs, but the writing quality is top-notch, and the content that does exist isn't rapey like most mind-control games (which generally removes my interest in the whole genre)

I do hope the author adds in body modification abilities once your mental 'hook' level reaches a certain amount with the various characters, but like I said earlier, the content quality is really good- even if some of the coding should have immediately thrown errors in any compiler ever. Luckily, there seems to be a community member or two that's helping debug, so the major progression bug that currently exists should be fixed soon.

And with what currently exists (i.e., the content frame), this game looks expandable enough to start supporting a CoC-style framework where different authors can add in different girls at different times without disrupting the narrative.

Nice old-school AIF feel without the guess-the-verb problem of old text adventures. The game needs some grammar editing and there are some inconsistencies in the code, but a very promising start to a great concept.

I'll be clear here....this game is old school. It reminds me of the old days of AIF games....RAGS, TADS, and Adrift. It's not quite Goblinboy-level of writing and there's no graphics, but it was very well-written and fun to play. If you must have graphics in your adult game, this is not for you.

The writing is excellent. The characters are interesting. There are stakes involved..and there's some solid humor here. I enjoyed the game (I only found one bug which I could not repeat).

I have 2 minor complaints.
First, making money isn't easy and it's a bit tedious. You don't seem to improve at micro work at all...so if you ExcelDrive twice a day you're losing money.

Secondly, I'd like to see this game expanded to include other characters...so I can't really call this game complete.

If the author teamed up with someone that does Ren'Py and graphics, they'd be unstoppable...because the weak part in 95% of these games is the story/characters/..and the ability for Myscra to tell a story and have interesting characters is excellent.

This is a good game.

Okay, probably should add more than that, but keep that first sentence in mind as I unload some gripes.

As Yamineko said in their review, this is a very promising game that currently has a number of problems . It is likely than many of these will be corrected in future releases , so they are not the death sentence that they could be.

I will say for the record that I have given up on games that were better designed than this for smaller issues. So what sets this one apart? Why does it get a pass when others do not?

The key, the saving grace of this game, is the writing. Accidental Mind's writing is funny, engaging, and—rare for the genre—feels unique while still being familiar. No it's not perfect, but the storytelling is so engaging that you stop caring about a buggy interface or confusing stat grind. Ordinarily, the writing and gameplay of a game should work hand in hand to draw the player in. A failure to sync these two often kills promising games before they begin. So it should say something about Accidental Mind's writing that it not only can function without its gameplay but also in spite of it.

Again, community mods have shown that a lot of the issues are more baby giraffe stumbling than broken legs, and I expect future updates will repair the gameplay to at least functional status, if not beyond. When that happens I look forward to seeing just how good this game can be.

Until then, I still highly recommend playing this early version. You may have to do some script editing or at the very least consult other players for help, but the experience you receive will be more than worth it. For now, don't look at this as a game, per se, but as a tremendous novel (or the first few chapters of one) with a slight commute between chapters. The commute might grate a little, but the story will wash away any annoyance and leave you ready to dive back into the grind just to get a bit more of the story.

All in all, a tremendous first outing that I cannot wait to see a continuation of.

This is a review for version 1.0 after having played through all content I could possibly find scouring through the source. I'm making this review taking into consideration, that this is a first version, and I'm using a patched version that isn't official yet (made by myself as I played). I'm also giving the author the benefit of the doubt he's gonna fix broken things soon.

Story
A very interesting take on superheroes, with a good role for the villain. The story managed to hook me in straight away. The pacing of training at the start is quite nice and the idea of "corrupting" girls, while not unique, is well executed. The mechanic upon which to increase your level with them is fairly unique and has a good depth to it. I feel like MCs motivation to corrupting people around him could be fleshed out a bit more, but I assume this is to come. 4/5

Writing
I love the writing. Period. The exposition is done in interesting sequences and the interaction with the (only) girl so far seems natural enough, including its gradual shift. Maybe an event upon upgrading the stage might be prudent, but that's about it in that department. I didn't find any glaring mistakes in spelling or grammar.
Where this game really took me was with the sex scenes. Nicely thematically diverse, with variations on every relationship level. Blaire is written just right according to my tastes, which is also clouding my judgment towards the rating a fair bit tbh. Even if she isn't your taste, where one character is well written, I'm sure more will follow. 5/5

Gameplay
There is a reasonable amount of mechanics for a text-based game. No silly mini-games anywhere, thank god for that. You grind your abilities and girls at a reasonable pace for this kind of game and with a walkthrough detailling where everything is, this will be a peachy game. However, unfortunately, there's many bugs. In the first upload, it's impossible to grind Blaire's stats to level 2 (or 3 upon reaching it), and 4 is also locked by a mistake. After reaching the last level, there's also quite a few events that don't fire correctly. Quite a few buttons are also broken and one room even softlocks you without escape. There's already a fan patch for it. Grinding attributes is capped at 10, due to higher events not firing. The game doesn't tell you, that the player attributes do not really matter atm either. The only feasible way of earning money is not accessible and even with that, the monetary requirements are way too high for what that method can give you. I hope all this will be changed/fixed in a future version and I'm giving my rating in faith that it will (a member here already made a hotfix for those who don't wanna dig through the code like us ). 3/5

tl;dr
Great text-only game in writing, certainly something to follow for now. Bugs aplenty in this version unfortunately, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt. Don't play this yet if you aren't prepared to suffer a fair bit through those bugs.