Ren'Py - Shattered Minds [v0.22 Beta Fix] [eXtasy Games]

Visually the game looks good, the models are nice, there's lot of content, but the story suffers a lot from how under developed the female characters are.

The game utilizes the mind control fetish but that doesn't mean you want the female characters to feel like dolls with an on/off switch.

The MC has a "landlady" and "roommate" and you never feel like he has a connection with either one of them. This extends to all the other female characters and a big problem with how the mind control works, the MC's interactions with the female are all about how he's going to mind control them, just listening to their problems until they become sex dolls.

The story is very good to play and the harem is also very good, good animation, the development is very good. The story keeps you in the game, the unfolding of the story is integral and the 3D of the girls is good (it could be better, but it's not bad at all).

This game actually has an interesting story and lots of actions. The renders are pretty good, with a variety of bodies and personalities for everyone's taste.
So why I give it 4/5 stars and not 5? Because after a while, adding too many characters + sandbox mode makes the game kinda repetitive. Hopefully the dev can spend some time expanding the stories of existing girls.

Was waiting with review, because didn't want to give this game 3*. Latest update (0.21) upraded this title to 4, so here we go:

Extraordinary plot that maybe have some small logic holes, but generally is pleasurable to read... and have repeatable breeding! Game is about superpowers and MC is ugly in his coat not afraid of using them. Corrupting people and bending their will or changing their minds to become powerful person with army of "loyal" women. Game don't have choices, if it comes to plot (at least I don't remember any of them), but it let dev focusing on this story giving relatively often updates. So, even if you can expect some enemies, you rather shouldn't be worried about losing, because of doing something wrong. It kills the thrill, but I can live with it.

Game have many pretty LIs and before MC conquer them, we'll be able to know more or less of their story. The problem is that, you're going to change their minds, so it's hard to get real connection with them. Even, if you want them as girlfriends (my choice), you'll always know, they aren't really themselves. It was the main reason I'm not giving this game 5*, but maybe dev will surprise me in future. That's why I hope that instead of adding 2000 new LIs, dev'll focus more on current ones, so there are more exclusive scenes like these added in 0.21v, which will let us at least a lil bit more connect with them.

As I mentioned earlier, LIs are pretty, not beautiful however. Visuals are on very high level and animations are nice for an eye, but they aren't exceptional. There's also a management system which is not challenging at all in setting up and don't require too much grinding. Beside of the very beginning, you can just set up what you need, breed many children and keep sleeping. It don't require almost anything, so I didn't feel guilty using cheats after a while maybe about energy, but it saved huge amount of time to cheat energy while corrupting very side LIs. Never really needed it for main LIs however.

To sum this up. If you like breeding harem games, you found one of these rare gems. It should also be a must play for people who like getting LIs in shady ways and bend their minds. For others? It's still a good game and I definetely recommend at least trying it.

Its a grindy sandbox requiring Money, XP, Energy, etc. Mod/Cheats makes it a lot more playable however.

Plot is simple you have mind control ability. government is after you.

LI's range from smoking hot to disgusting.

The biggest issue for me with this AVN is simple once a girl is in your harem the lewd content with her is just repeatable that's it. Its why I am giving only 2 stars and even then I waffle if I should give 1

Fun game that doesn't require a mod to guide you so that's a plus. Animations are good and the actual story isn't bad either. Only real complaint is that the harem become braindead once you 100/100 them.

I have spent several hours playing Shattered Minds 0.20 beta. It's still under development but outstanding so far. The game is open world where the player can explore and choose which girls/milfs to add to his harem. I am looking forward to additional updates.

Sandbox ruins this. Its in there pointlessly but to add grind, and it destroys the flow of the story. It results in indifference towards all of the characters. Animations arent good enough to carry it without having a decent plot

Would pass

Mega game, the first time I played it I was surprised and boy did I choose the friend route wrong, without a doubt one of the best that hooks you with the story and characters, not to mention that it's full of beautiful milfs.

One of my favourite porn games that already played! Love the stories, love the mechanics of the game, its so amazing the fact working the girls until you get them to our harem.

I am huge fan of huge big tits, so the game have I good balanced of body forms, size and shapes. Love Alice and Linda ! Another thing that is rare to find for me is the pregnancy kink which make me hard as fck! Simple love it!

What I would love to see in the future more different sexual animations depending the places. More huge tits characters. More stories related with beach. And the cherry on the top of the cake for me, would be adding urination kink .

Amazing game! Hoping to see more of it!

[v0.19 Beta]


Characters and relationships:
⠀⠀⠀Every character and every relationship are all shallow. The only interesting character is Luna (and maybe June, simply because she has more quests), the rest are meh, but even if they weren't, we wouldn't be able to find out, because they turn into nameless slaves way too fast.
⠀⠀⠀For some reason mom dresses like a hooker without any corruption to begin with. You help her out with her boss, who's openly sexually harassing his employees and literally laughs like a gremlin. Then you massage her couple of times, have sex, add to harem. And it's the same with other characters: you do them a couple of favors, corrupt them a bit here and there, add them to your harem and that's it, it happens way too quickly. And the only content you will get from them from now on is a repeatable sex scene, that is pretty much the same for every character. This way we fail to establish any emotional connection with these characters. You can get them pregnant infinitely, but it's treated like an afterthought and a liablity: nobody reacts or acknowledges the fact, it only lasts for 1-2 weeks and is very restricting in actions that you can perform. And ofc instead of working with and expanding upon already existing and barely touched cast, the dev just adds more and more to the pile.

Grind:
⠀⠀⠀There is quite a bit and it IS annoying, but not so much to the point of being an absolute slog to struggle through. There is exp that you need to level up your mind control ability, money, mind points and "stamina". Honestly the most annoying one is stamina. The Ava minigame gives you enough exp to get through most encounters, money is easy to earn with blackjack and mind points you need to acquire new harem members for the most part, and there are a bunch of those, but you also get a lot with fake pregnancies, so you just have to skip a bunch of days. But stamina you only get 2 points each day and it's NOT NEARLY enough, and you constantly run out. Sure you can consume energy drinks to mitigate the issue somewhat, but when you do, you get screen noise effect, which I'm totally not a fan of, and it needs to go. Also why give the player option to "Mind Insight" characters that you can't interact with yet? And why does it waste your stamina?

Choices:
⠀⠀⠀Flavor text; Skip/see a scene; +/- corruption (attraction) for a character; set a girls role in your harem (reversible); can skip some characters, but most are mandatory; don't think there are decisions that would branch the story, character paths or anything of the sort.

Plot:
⠀⠀⠀Kinda Interesting. There are some plot holes and inconsistencies mainly related to power and Ava, I won't go into details, but you'll see, they're hard to miss. Don't know what purpose served the fantasy and cyberpunk quest sections of the game, other than to throw you out of immersion, they aren't really coherent mini-stories, more like parodies so to speak. I'd prefer if MC actually had to delve into the depths of his mind, having to deal with psychological traumas/barriers/challenges in order to obtain his new powers, but alas.

Erotic content:
⠀⠀⠀Most sex scenes are incredibly short, like, '5 seconds' short. The build up is weak, there is basically no sex talk, no intimacy, and barely any aftermath either. There are moan sound effects but they're not well mixed and feel disconnected from the scenes. Animations are okay, pretty mediocre to be fair, they lack life, momentum and amplitude.


Playtime: 10-15 hours

Amazing Renpy Game, and probably one of if not the best Mind Control games here, while a lot of games do have mind control few have it as the main gimmik and this one does it amazing, also cant wait to see the personality transfer(possession) get more explored.

I think this VN deserves a better score than it has.

The story is pretty entertaining and there really aren't any glaring errors with spelling or grammar.

The animations aren't bad though some of the sex scenes are a bit lack luster. However the repeatable sex scenes are a big plus.

The quest system is well done and easy to follow.

One big drawback is there is an emphasis on supersized, sloppy, saggy breasts to the point of looking nasty. I'm not sure what the Dev was going for but yikes. Case in point one character, Luna, who has normal, average sized boobs is described as being too small. It's hard to imagine anyone considering her breasts as too small but someone has some unrealistic expectations.

Still all in all worth playing.

Game is decent overall, except that it's a bit grindy and once the MC does all of the possible actions with a character they will NEVER get another scene in the game.

Instead of focusing on the existing and making more interactions among them, which is what we'd expect since we had a pseudo group scene, the dev instead basically mothballs every single woman and just adds a new one.

So if you like games where you have a limited play arc with a character and then she never gets new scenes, this game is for you. If you like games where the MC, once he get's the women in bed, has more and more, and more interesting scenes and encounters with them, this is not the game for you.

It's a pity the dev didn't focus more on a smaller group of women and have the MC, depending on which way his 'alignment' went, have them do more stuff toeach other and him, ending with larger and larger group fun activities. That would be more logical than someone simply chasing more new women each time.

Edit[0.21]: Well, I said I'd change the rating, and here I am doing just that. Dev added post-control content for the characters, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Although, honestly, the tits thing is still an issue that would otherwise bring the score down to a four, but I feel like the recent update needs to be rewarded, so five it is.

This game is a massive mixed bag for me.
On the one hand, the story is pretty good, the mind-control mechanic is cool, and the moment the MC takes full control of someone is satisfying.

On the other hand, the amount of massive sagging tits is an issue for me, but the main problem is the eventual pay-off. Like, the process of taking control over someone is good, but then when it's done, that's basically it. They become just another body, possibly living in your home, and you get some entirely silent scenes with them that are basically the same for each of them.

Honestly, breast thing aside, if the dev simply took one update cycle to focus on improving the aftermath of a character's story, and created at least one, repeatable custom scene for each character after they become fully enthralled, that would instantly bump the game up to at least a four, possibly a five for me.

Good story, well done mind control mechanic in a sandbox that is not frustrating. Good visuals and pregnancy is fun.

Only issue is breast size is about 50% too big across the board. You can focus on just the girls you like (that is, younger with realistic breast size) with only a few exceptions, but I expect to hit a ceiling soon. Hoping I don't have to make the grannies or the women with breasts to their knees have to join my harem. It seems the more recently introduced LI's have closer to normal sized breasts, so I think dev is listening.

Great game. Nice render, only one thing is almost every girl with too big breast. Good logic of the story. Not too fast not too slow. Not too hard and story flows fluently with some logic. So far one of my favorite.

Why not 5?
Propositions of some characters were simply off-putting.
Also this game has only one anal scene and with some bimbo not one of main girls...
Those are personal preferences, but with all the time that I invested (hours!) trying to reach that anal scene with mom or sister... game has anal tag so I'd expect some amount of anal...
Other than that game is quite good.
Gameplay: 5/5
Animations: 5/5
Story: 10/5 (damn good)
Characters: 5/5 (girls are different and fun)

Shattered Minds Review

When Powers Becomes a Thing
Imagine if one day suddenly people got superpowers. And it so happens that you’re one of them, but to not expose yourself, you need to keep this a secret (by secret, I mean only telling your only friend, Bill).

With the sudden powers to control/convince people’s minds, you can do anything! Or with the proper training, since you just unlocked this gift, and with great responsibilities comes great weakness.

Story – Content/Gameplay
Shattered Minds is a mix between visual novel and quest gameplay, where you’ll need to complete quests to proceed with the story.
When I first laid my eyes on this game, I judged the book by its cover, but soon after playing it for a while, my whole view changed to a different angle.

The game begins with a strange, unknown lady speaking to the person behind the screen; she informs you that before proceeding with the game, you will need to pick a few names.
You can go with default names or use customizable ones; the characters you’ll need to name are: The main character, your roommate, and your landlord (one word for her, damn).

After selecting the names, our protagonist will display for us his wet dream, which gets interrupted by the alarm clock. But surprise, surprise, to your awakening you bestow the morning view of your roommate’s titties (within her clothes, ofc) as she has to wake you up before sleeping in... ON A MONDAY.

Once you awaken and disgust your roommate with some morning wood, you begin your morning and introduce the player to his daily life. And explaining the concept of his phone (I'll explain it later).

When you arrive at the school and meet your best and only friend, Bill. You proceed to class, encounter some of the characters you’ll meet later, and see some teasing content.

Later, once in the school bathroom (after failing to talk to your crush), the quarterback of the American football team comes in and threatens you to stop trying to talk to her, as he has been warming her up for weeks to eventually ask her out.
And just as he is about to punch our protagonist's face in, he freezes up. It’s after this encounter that you’ll get to know that you have powers just like you’ve been hearing all over the news of people all over the world have uncovered.

And by finding your powers, you also find the mystery lady from the beginning. It is no other than YOURSELF, or a part of you. Someone who is a piece of you and has been in the back of your very mind your entire life. Her name is Ava, and she is your power; she will help you improve your powers and fix your messes. She’s the smarter half of you.

“Why did they only appear now?” You might ask, well, nobody is quite sure. But one thing is for sure: you can’t go around and make people do everything you want just like that. You need training to improve your skill. It’s like you can’t ask out a girl before saying, “Hi, I am.”

With your newly found skills and your newly found brain parasite... I mean consciousness, Ava. You will improve your powers and slowly and steadily take over the city, corrupting more and more people and making things go your way of thinking. And of course, some desirable lust play was involved with the whole mess.

Phone & Time
At the beginning of a new game, you’d be introduced to THE PHONE, where all necessary access beholds.
The following apps are:
Quest Log – Keeps track of each quest for each character.
Inventory – Explains itself, doesn’t it? (My regards to the protagonist for that line.)
Contacts – Keeps good information of most of the characters that you’ll meet. (Later game content will display a second tab on the people that you have subdued into either your girlfriend, servant, or mindless drone.)
Nilery – Fastest online store, providing drone delivery & arrival within one hour after purchase.
Wallpaper – To of course change the background image on your phone.
Achievements – See your goals and maybe try to unlock hidden achievements.
Find Me! - Allows the player to see specifically where everyone is, if available to encounter.
Messenger – Makes people text you and gives you the ability to text people.
Money – Just a view for your bank account, keeping track of your money.

Last but not least
My Powers – Shows the player the protagonist's power level and the ability to level up minor skill tabs. This app displays after the encounter with Ava.
And
Reports – A tab that shows up after subduing your first victim. Keep track of how much money or exp they earn you.

Time in shattered minds doesn’t count days but keeps track of days and time such as – Mornings, Afternoon, and Evenings – Mon to Sun. And this is connected to the quest app and game's function.

Depending on the time of day, you can do certain side jobs and certain quests, and people will be at certain places at the specific time and specific days.

Which means nothing is day-limited, and you can go on for 40 days, for example, and nothing big would have changed with the quests or story output. (Except for the gym, they cost around 60 – 100 bucks for a 30-day gym card.)

Note: The gym card is useless for now as all content in the gym is unavailable/coming soon.

Money & Side Jobs
Money is a need in this game just as much as it is in the real world. Money can purchase items from Nilery or be used in quests or scenes.

Nilery is also one of the few side jobs you can earn money from; Nilery specifically sells items. Then you can earn a few bucks sorting the books at the school library. And also create some goofy burgers at the coffee shop.

Visual & Audio
Visuals
Like the game, I judged the visuals too early before getting a greater view over the whole thing.
The environment is bright with brightly colored furniture, a bit too bright and could use some more shaders for a more realistic feeling.

Characters and animations look okay, and so far, I've not even once encountered any characters/clothes or anything colliding with each other.
Intimate animations are decent and seem like any other NSFW visual novel intimate animations. By this I mean it still looks good and smooth, but it’s also nothing special or new but more of a normal/casual style from these games.

All in all, the game looks and runs well, along with the amazing story and gameplay giving it all a purpose in a highly understandable and non-confusing way.

Audio
When the audio comes into the pit of the arena, it’s pretty good. I highly enjoy the music even if all are not original; some I've heard before and they give nostalgia.
The music doesn’t play 24/7. It ends after a while or after certain scenes, and it doesn’t get on your bad side even after playing for a few hours.

NSFW audio for intimate scenes sounds okay; they’re not in poor quality as they have been in other games I've reviewed. The original volume is somewhat loud, or at least for me, and sometimes is repeated, but it is still good.

Of course, I cannot forget about one of the coolest things I first noticed about this game. While in the main menu and hovering your pointer over the menu tabs, the sound of shattering glass plays.
Both are very fitting for the game itself and a neat addon for the menu.

Pros and Cons
Pros

• Story is 10/10 .
• The visuals are great.
• Gameplay & Quests.
• Day & Time system.
• Money system & purpose.
• Skill levels.
• Understandable explanations & Story (hard to get confused).

Cons

• Library Book minigame.
• Animations.
• Gym (Unavailable/coming soon content).
• Unable to sell bought items (like Hidden Camera or Magazines)
• Shading/lights.

My Final Little Thought
Shattered Minds, only by its current content, is already highly recommendable, and it doesn’t matter what the price may be. This is a game that fits both those lustful-seeking bastards and those who enjoy some gameplay content too in a visual novel mix.

I’m sure a lot more are going to agree with me on its release that this game is enjoyable and has an awesome story, even if it’s not everyone’s preference firsthand.

The brought-up cons are only minor ones and don’t mean that much.

Hoping that this could give some insight for the game before its release and interest new players. And that not too much information was given away, as what is written is purely only a scratch of the surface.

Shattered Minds? < Adventure Minds!
Rating: 5/5

Links
Steam Store Page
Website Review

Very good game and the story is also relatively exciting. It's fun to play this game and after every quest you can't wait to find out what happens next. The graphics are also okay, even if they could be a little better, but that's just my personal opinion.

Sehr gutes Spiel und die Story ist auch relativ spannend. Es macht Spaß, dieses Spiel zu spielen und freut sich nach jeder Quest darauf, wie es denn weiter geht. Grafik ist auch ganz okay, auch wenn es ein wenig besser sein könnte, aber das ist nur meine persönliche Meinung.
Warte jetzt nur noch auf weitere Updates!