MIND: Path To Thalamus Enhanced Edition (Oculus Rift)

Price at Time Of Review: £7 ($10)
Comfort Rating: Red (Extreme Movement)
Genre: Adventure
Supported Platforms: Oculus Rift, Rift S
Supported Controllers: Oculus Touch
Best Playing Position: Standing, Sitting, Roomscale
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG

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Description: Path to Thalamus is a First Person Puzzler that throws you into a fantastic and surreal environment. You will bend the natural elements to your will in order to progress in this emotive, mindbending tale.

Review: MIND: Path To Thalamus Enhanced Edition is a first person puzzle games that kind of explores the art of psychology, the inner workings of people’s minds. To start with this is a dreamy, beautiful looking game that is a treat for the eyes. With a strange dream like, inner mind-workings style of environments it always feels sleepy and always strangely peaceful (most the time anyway, apart from the odd nightmare scenario). The puzzles are not your usual things. This is not a game that will hold your hand or guide you in any way, this game wants you to explore the environment and you will do just that if you want to or not.

The story centres around a father who has seen his children’s death. Going slightly mad as a result of this terrible happening he starts to have some sort of dream about going after his daughter as well as facing all the terrible things he has done in his past. This is a deep storyline and one that does need you to do a lot of reading and listening. The controls are fairly easy, but the crazy dream like scenario makes solving puzzles harder as you don’t work out what to do straight away, it takes time, it takes effort and often a certain amount of luck.

While it doesn’t really gain anything to be in VR MIND: Path To Thalamus’s beautiful environments look good in VR and the dream like style can often feel strangely real. While for me the storyline was far too complicated and the puzzles often not clear at all I did still have fun exploring and that is a real credit to the game that it made me want to do just that. Sadly I did find the puzzles more of a hindrance than a joy, but I did soon start to see them as a key to getting the reward of yet another beautiful section to explore. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it’s I do feel you get your money’s worth (just about).