Ren'Py - Shattered Minds [v0.12] [eXtasy Games]

TL;DR:
- v0.09
- Visuals are awesome
- Story is interesting
- Plot development and grind could use some adjustments
- Advertised kinks are worked out to (almost) perfection

So, this is one of those games that has me kind of on edge. On one hand, the visuals are REALLY great! The models are hot, the textures are probably THE most detailed skins I've seen in a game so far, and the animations are perfectly smooth and more than just two-second loops of in-and-out motions.

On the other hand, though, everything is just... a little bit off, stopping the game from being perfect.

For example...

...the story. It is interesting and worked out well, but the pacing is a little weird. It is a constant back-and-forth between long stretches of porn and story. Like, first you're trying to get a woman into bed, to the point where you kinda just accept that this game has a setting, but no story. Then there's no sex at all while you do nothing but read through exposition and solve weird quests, to the point where you almost forgot that this is a porn game. And then you're suddenly back to trying to get women into your bed with no story at all!

...the character progression. You start out on a long-ass quest to corrupt MC's mother and try to bed her, jumping through hoops and grinding for skill points, until she finally surrenders and is willing and eager to do everything you might desire. Aaaaand then you can't do any of that because, first, you have to corrupt MC's sister, so she won't freak out in case she notices anything. Beats me why that wasn't a problem while you gave the woman screaming orgasms on the massage table, but now you'll spend so much time corrupting the sister that, by the time you're finally done with her as well, you basically forgot about the mother because she's completely unavailable for anything during that time. Just like that prostitute the game started with, that took MC's virginity but then is passed off to MC's mother's boss and is never seen again. A shame, really.

...the grind. You need skill- and mind-points to corrupt the characters. Now, the dev implemented some new systems to gain those points en masse, reducing the grind significantly, but it still sucks when you have to put the whole story on hold to play tedious memory games instead.

...the kink-options. I absolutely love the mind control theme. This dev really offers every possible application imaginable, from simply corrupting women, all the way to using it to turn male characters into trans characters you can then have fun with. It even offers to corrupt the mothers to have fun with them as well. But, while I'm no fan of NTR games, I admit I wouldn't be against corrupting the characters' fathers as well to then cuck them. This is basically a staple-plotpoint of pretty much every erotic mind control story I ever read, so I kinda expected to see something along those lines here as well. Especially since we DID get a scene like that with the jock and his girlfriend.

...the sex. Yes, the animations are fluid as hell, and the textures are high quality, but I just wish the MC would do more than just prod the girls with MAYBE the first two inches of his dick. I mean, if you give the guy eight inches to work with, why don't you make him use all of them!? Same for the dirty-talk. I know, tastes are different, but it's a visual novel, so I kinda like to read dirty language while characters have sex.

...the slave system. I think it's worked out great... in general. I love how the dev considered that people might not want to turn all the characters into mindless puppets, but I still would've liked to see custom titles per character. Like, if I choose the "Mom"-Personality for the mother, maybe I'd still like her to call MC by some pet name instead of just "Son", while I'm sure there are quite a few players who'd like MC to call her "Mommy" instead of "Mom". Maybe I'd like to set custom titles for the slaves as well, depending on who they were to the MC prior to being corrupted. I mean, look at the girlfriend. She's conditioned to see MC as her father figure and orgasm when he praises her, but you can't make her call MC "Daddy" unless you turn her into one of the mindless slaves and have ALL of them call MC "Daddy". It would be a nice touch.

All in all, the game is still in development and I'm sure the dev has much to do. But I'm sure the result will be VERY worth it.

Honestly as of v0.09 this is still in the average category. The major issue is that the characters don't stand out, and the sex scenes are soulless.

I love mind control and corruption games.
And Lthere is so much here to love, and the bones of what could be amazing.

The quality of the art present is good, the writing is a passable.

But the pacing of the story and how the characters behave is barely altered by the mechanics.

I played the first update of this game and although there wasn't much content it seemed interesting enough to keep my eye on it. After a year of development I have to say this is one of the best mind control porn games out there. The graphics are very good, the gameplay is a tiny challenge but nothing annoying. The sex scenes aren't very complicated but it's hard to complain.

New game for me but thought I'd give it a go. The game itself is grindy but not so much that it becomes boring. There is plenty to do and its easy to have a love/hate relationship with a couple of the characters. I get the feeling that it is still nowhere near finished but certainly has the potential to become better. I hope the next update doesn't make us wait too long!

Very exciting game, tx.
Even if I'm not a fan of mind control stuff.
Still Mom and sis are gorgeous.
And other exciting characters adding are nice.
Such as Linda (Bill's mother), the dean, etc...
The quest log is very good and helpful.
Hope to see an update soon.

Review for V0.09, solid 4 star game, 5 if it continues. Game with good graphics, no bugs, and good english. It has a bit of grind to get points, but they are extremely easy to get (go to sleep and recharge). Progression is there, with changing dialogue and images.

Models - very nicely done. The "Landlady" is rather young looking which is unfortunate, while there are a few other LI's that you are introduced to that are more MILFy looking, so not sure why the Dev wanted such a young model for her.

Sex scenes, a little bland, very well done but very vanilla, I am fine with that, but while a multitude of clothing options exist for normal gameplay, sex scenes are always nude, and kinda meh.

Animations - yes

Plot, the MC is a young guy, not stupid as stated in some other reviews, he is totally fine, and finds himself with powers. He is not evil in nature, has some minor conflicts in his head about what he is doing, but as a horny young guy, goes down that path.

Corruption - its a mind control game, you do a few "revenge" things to some characters, and makes rather tame mind changes to all his LIs, his enemy, and his friend.

Options exist for going full slave route with his LIs or a girlfriend lover kinda route. So if you don't want to turn your "Landlady" into a mindless sex slave, you can keep her as your "Landlady" with girlfriend benefits.

Good amount of content already at v0.09, a little slow getting to the good stuff, and at this point once you get there with a few LIs, but thats about it for now.

Plus to the Dev, you get to that is always a plus.

Plot is good, a little tame so far, and would love to see further expansion on the sex scenes and a little imagination, they are not very spicy, kinda bland.

Solid game though with great potential.

This review is for v0.09

TLDR: Long gameplay, slow build up, decent models/animation, moronic character

Pros:

• the variety of female models available for your viewing pleasure is fairly nice
• the game doesn't just act as a clicker gallery of animations and images, it actually has something of a plot (although inconsequential gameplay logic)
• pregnancy winds up playing a prominent (but optional) role rather than barely being in the game

Cons:

• The main character is as dumb as a bag of bricks
• The main plot is as dumb as a bag of bricks (although they do talk about it briefly, but it doesn't make it any better)
• current "content" is a very slow grind away before you get to the good stuff, but when you finally get to the good stuff, it's already been 6+ hours and you realize you also just hit the end of current content
• Your character is kind of a douchey prude who apparently has issues with women who have tattoos, colorful hair, or "bad" attitudes...aka: he's vanilla af

Minor issues:

• there are better models out there (minor con as the existing models are fairly good)
• animations are decent, but could be a lot better
• Lots of settings you have to deal with at the beginning of the game, such as turning off moving images, setting your measurement system to freedom units, etc.
• there is a semi intense grind for exp early on because you have no idea what level of each stat you will need at any given time and it takes longer and longer each time to level up, so you could be walking into any situation wholly unprepared without knowing until it happens
• way too many minigames (there's like, three, which take way too much time when you have to do them more than once)
• it isn't so much a sandbox game as much a kinetic novel in a loose environment (you can choose which story to progress, but you MUST progress the stories in the manner that has been decided, with you only having a few choices that actually matter, so prepare to rollback your choices and savescum a bit)

All in all, it's a decent game, although it is definitely lacking in some regards, which is understandable considering it isn't even at a v0.1 yet.
Definitely worth checking out if you have a day of free time, but if you don't have a literal day (6+ hours) to grind through the slow start, you should probably avoid it for now, especially if you are just looking for fap material as the first legit sex scene doesn't pop up for a while and the next legit sex scene is a VERY long way away from there.

If I could change some things about the game, I would severely reduce the grind on some resources, specifically time as you can only trigger some events on specific days at specific times if certain characters are in specific locations, which severely increases the length of time needed to play before you can get to any "content".
I would also make the character a lot less moronic as a big concept of the game is that a part of your subconscious mind knows WAY more than you do to the point that painfully obvious things (especially if you've played ANY mind control porn game before) elude the main character for way too long, which even your own mind constantly insults you about.
At the very beginning of the game it makes sense, but if your own brain is insulting your own stupidity and obliviousness to something you apparently already know, then there is a serious problem.
I would also make it so that you could set minigames to be automatic full successes since the only game you can currently finish automatically is literally the most important minigame in the game and you get told that you will get a random amount of experience from it and it will never be as high as if you succeeded on your own.
That alone makes the game take way longer as the minigame in question can take a while if you are determined to get a perfect win result.
As for the plot, I would personally just write a better one all around since it currently has a discount "Dreams of Desire" feel to it, and not in a way that feels nice to think about for more than three seconds.

Models - Superb and unique

Writing-Decent to good. Some criticisms from others I find valid but it's coherent. A step above like 95% of the games on this site so.

Updates - Very regular and ftm each one has enough content to play though. Major selling point for me. The game is ambitious but at this rate it will accomplish what the dev wants.

Gameplay- Actually pretty well done for what it is. If you just hate sandbox games give it a pass, if you don't mind, this part won't hold you down. The phone gives you the next steps for every person and has quest tracking. There is a find app which will tell you where anyone is if you need them. There is an rpg point system but I always just skipped it and haven't been locked out of anything. The messenger part I've seen other devs stumble over but this one works flawlessly. This is the part seems to get the most criticism but I personally think it's unfounded especially with the last update where a whole bunch of location events have been implements. Presumably there will only be more updates to help flesh out this portion of the game.

Recommended, have fun.

Game 3D very good, playing the game is not hard you just following the quest main story and side quest is good. Genre mind control + slave in game is nice. art sex scenes is very good (hoping add art harem scenes too).
very good job Mr. Extasy.

Not a bad game, but it's not a good one either, mostly due to it being fairly anemic in content. This doesn't seem to be a matter of there not being enough updates yet either: Every girl requires a relatively high amount of effort, in exchange for a relatively low amount of fucking.

Or maybe it feels low because of the way the game presents the fucking to you, with a short dialog and a simple scene viewer consisting of 2 short loops per position, with one or two positions per scene, except when bootycalling fully enslaved girls.

The reason this game can't be called bad is that there is a seed of a great story there in every girl, even if they invariably feel rushed and therefore unsatisfying at the end. Super arousing buildup and a few scenes that take place in exciting situations, as if building to this massively kinky climax, but then you get a scene that feels kinda forced and then a shitty bare-bones management slash booty call system.

It's the kind of letdown that also highlights how arbitrary your choices have been up until that point, as if pouring salt in the wound.

The graphics and animation are actually very high in quality, and the girls have individual personalities, which is why I even bother to write a review at all. Shattered Minds starts out like could be one of the greats and stumbles a few steps before the finish line.

1 - This is not a sandbox, its a kinetic novel with extra walking. You have a few quests in your phone and thats all you can do. Every other interaction with NPCs is a short "how are you?" dialog.

2 - You dont control your magic powers. You keep doing your quest and at some point magic is applied. Game never asks what exactly you want to say when commanding others.

3 - Stats are useless. If your magic works or fails totally depends on linear script. In tutorial its said that you will see, if a person can resist your magic. But most of the time there are no hints or requirements for success.

4 - MC is an idiot, so as his friend. You will suffer because of their stupidity.

5 - Your own alter-ego keeps mocking you for every scripted fail. Instead of playing as a team an telling what she knows in advance, she keeps making fun of you.

At least 3D models are good. Its the only thing that keeps me playing.

I'd say it is SO close to 3 stars for me, but it just doesn't feel right to give it 3. I think the issue is that I've played games with the corruption/mind control theme that I've found live up to the potential far more than this AVN. The dev certainly has the skill to improve it, but there are currently some real glaring flaws.

I'll start off with the positives: visually, it's not too bad. The good thing is, the visuals also appear to improve the longer the game goes on. Lighting and posing are both well-done, although the repeated blinking animations while in the same pose often feel strange. I also dislike the way the game uses the parallax effect, but this can be turned off.

Dialogue wise, it's not very good. Like the visuals, it also seems to improve, but there are some real rough stages. Weird phrasing, janky grammar, and just...weird discussions? The conversations with Bill nearly made me quit the whole thing, because he is such an unnatural person.

Story-wise, it's a mess too. The game can't decide if you have mind control superpowers or have a demon empowering/possessing you, so instead you have both. Ava is a "mAnIfEsTaTiOn" of your powers given a physical and verbal form. Sure, lets ignore the basic fact that human's can't make up faces or that it makes no sense how his powers apparently need to have a personification to work. Other than that, you have no reason to really do anything besides "gotta catch 'em all!" There's no hook to the game, no interesting characters, not even the MC is interesting. Everything about the writing feels derivative of better, more fleshed out AVNs. It just feels...messy. Uncoordinated.

The "free-roam" at the beginning is a joke, because it's just forcing you to navigate around when you only have a single choice in every instance. When you actually get to the free-roam, it STILL feels like it's unnecessary. Why not just streamline it, have us do things in a particular order? The dev CLEARLY wants us doing things in a particular way, but STILL goes about pretending like the world is just our oyster.

The only reason it's got 2 stars is for the quality of the modelling, posing, lighting, and overall visuals. Writing should be a big contributer for AVNs, and unfortunately this just doesn't do a great job. It's a total toss up between 2 stars and 3 stars, but honestly I just can't really recommend it.

One of the better mind control games on this site. This game does a good job of allowing the player to tweak how exactly the mind control manifests which is nice, you can have them be loving, subservient or mindless drones. Corrupting the family is always a nice touch so it's nice to see that incorporated too.
The visuals are good overall, the animations are decent and the models are all nice and varied. They are also fairly realistic looking without being unattractive.
The overall narrative isn't anything special and there are a lot of your standard college porn game tropes here, but none of that really gets in the way of the core gameplay of corrupting and enslaving a harem.
Recommended for anyone that likes incest games and mind control. If either of those aren't for you you probably won't enjoy the game

The premise of this game has always been cool to me but early on there wasn't enough content for it to feel worth playing. I just finished update 0.8 and this game has really started to feel more fleshed out and exciting. Excellent scenes/renders and even the sandbox elements I am enjoying. Definitely 5/5 and excited for it to get even better

This game is the perfect example of an amazing concept and an amazing core of a game being completely destroyed by a pointless sandbox system. STOP.PUTTING.USELESS.SANDBOX.IN.YOUR.GAMES. It does NOTHING except ruin whatever type of game you are trying to make. There is NOTHING here in this concept that would require a sandbox. The girls look hot, the idea of everyone having some type of hidden superpower is cool, and the writing isn't even that bad. However, having to navigate useless empty areas, fish around to find random npcs at certain times of day, having to screw around in your phone that is bloated with all sorts of useless features like accumulating money, finding random things in your laundry room and more just is a complete bullet in this games head. I'd recommend that you avoid this game and any other games like it. Until there is significant pushback against these garbage sandbox "free roam" games we will keep getting disappointments like this.

I just finished playing version 0.07 of Shattered Minds and I have to say I really enjoyed it!
It took me 2 days for like 2-3 hours each day. So as you see, there's already some content to play.

I usually avoid adult games where you play a teenager in school - there's just too many games out there with that setting and usually
I hate the stereotypes of characters in those settings (bitches, popular girl, popular guy, hot teacher, shy student in class...)
Well, those characters are also in this game BUT I was suprised I actually liked the way the game includes and treats them! Bill is your best buddy and I really enjoyed the scenes with him where you and him test the MC
powers against the school bullies. LOL. I think big part is also the nice humor and music at times. It's not all fun though, there's
some cool mind control abilities for the MC too. Regarding mind control powers- its really presented in a cool way.
And as we gain more power we gain more profit and the sex rewards are good! My favorite is the corruption of the math teacher:
As we convince her to give the MC private lessons each lesson becomes more and more exciting Until we can enslave her! YES!
Besides the milf teacher you have more women to corrupt. My favorites are mom and sister who you can slowly corrupt - at the end of my playthrough I think
some nude family actions are not too far away

While the MC is not a super alpha predator he manages to keep his women at bay, often thanks to his powers - so as a maledom fan I found the behaviour of MC acceptable. And as the goal of the game seems to be a harem of enslaved girls Im totally on board!

Oh graphics are also nice! All characters are unique and well designed. Im really looking forward for future updates as the story
right now really picks up. Keep up the good work dev!

Oh yeah, another great sandbox game! The game interaction windows are very elegantly designed. 3D models are also super cool! The author also announce that this game will be on steam soon, I will definitely buy it to support the author!

This review is from someone subbed to the Patreon.

Shattered Minds is a conundrum. On the one hand, it's a game about my favorite genre: Mind Control/Hypnosis. On the other hand, it's a fake sandbox game with almost no content outside of the main story, with several places to visit but nothing to do in those places you visit.

A sandbox SHOULD have things you are supposed to worry about outside of the main story, whether that's relationships with characters to maintain, chores to complete, or even an actual job the MC needs to work for spending money. All of these activities you complete as the player culminate into something that we call a JOURNEY, and to paraphrase a famous quote: "A good story is about the journey, not the destination."

That being said, the game is an empty corridor populated with "things" that repeat the same lines back to you with no variation. There is no interacting with characters outside of quests, meaning that as the player there is nothing in the game to make you care about any of these things called characters. There is essentially nothing to do in the game aside from doing what the guide in the phone tells you to do and grinding XP in the mirror world, even playing 0.08 which came out a couple of days before the writing of this review there is nothing to do once you complete all of the quests. You can technically make 2 characters go to the MC's room to play 'hide-the-sausage', but it's not implemented in a way that complements a sandbox game. It just instantly happens as if they just phased into existence at that very moment.

Even the whole mind control part of the game isn't all that enjoyable. The main character just waves his metaphorical magic wand and BAM they're mind-controlled. There's no struggle, no corruption, or coercion. Just like with the rest of the game, you watch what happens in a scripted scene, then go back to clicking around in an empty and fake world filled with entities that have not changed since the very first release.

To wrap up and summarize this rant, Shattered Minds is a VN pretending to be a sandbox with nothing to do outside of the quests, and currently has nothing in the game to make the world in the game "real". Fake characters, and a fake world. There might be a point in time where the dev fixes and fleshes out everything, but based on the roadmap I saw on the Patreon I'm not convinced that they're worried about anything but racing to the finish line and making this journey as forgettable as possible.

Fun quests and hot characters. It could improve by building upon + adding to systems and features already in place, although it's a very good game already. I wouldn't mind seeing more interactions in free roam, as well as some more side quests for existing characters. They're good characters who I'm eager to interact with more!

Extremely promising with an excellent groundwork and solid models. The story is not obtrusive and there is infrastructure for stuff like pregnancy in the game already so if this is consistently updated it will end up as an extremely good finished product, I think. It's definitely one to watch.