Broken Minds (2018)

• NICE • LIAR • PSYCHOPATH • PUPPET •

Beautiful art, awesome music and cool story.

The most standout of LockedOn's works, a dizzying mystery, anti-mystery or possibly un-mystery that takes the whole "Player choice shapes the ongoing state of the world" Schrodinger's Gun concept and runs with it as fast and as far as it is able. This story is, just about, the most content it's possible to extract from a very simple closed-circle murder mystery scenario. Whenever the game tries to be funny, it mostly lands; and whenever it tries to be impressive, it mostly succeeds as well, but your mileage may vary if you prefer plots that take themselves just a tad bit more serious.

Broken Minds is a dark, unconventional visual novel developed and published by LockedOn that leans heavily into psychological tension, fragmented storytelling, and player-driven interpretation. Set in 1990s Japan, the game places the player in the role of Noa Karada, a young woman whose already fragile life becomes increasingly unstable after she is targeted by a serial killer known as The Orphan. Rather than casting the player as a detective solving a crime from a position of control, the game flips expectations by centering the experience on vulnerability, confusion, and emotional unease, making the mystery feel personal and disorienting in ways that set it apart from more traditional genre entries. The narrative unfolds through a visual novel structure, but it rarely feels passive. Conversations with members of the Yamagata Private Detective Agency form the backbone of the story, and these interactions are filled with strange logic, shifting motivations, and moments where emotional intuition matters just as much as rational deduction. Dialogue choices frequently test the player’s understanding of characters rather than their ability to simply select the “correct” answer. In sev…

super underrated game- art style is really cool, characters are goofy and its fun to explore all the different endings

The writing is a little odd at times, narratively and in terms of moment-to-moment, but it's overall a really impressive and interesting take on the detective VN, and it's really cool visually