knowing nothing about pocket mirror going in, what drew me in most about it was its structure; your only sort of objective to begin with is to remember who you are, and with no idea how to go about that other than just pressing on through its dreamscapes, this allows the game to seemingly do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, varying wildly in tones and aesthetics and objectives, you'll start out in some sort of dungeon then emerge upstairs to a spooky hallway that ends in a tea party, with a ballroom right next door. You'll spend one minute in a gingerbread dollhouse and the next in an old creaky manor. The tone can change wildly between individual rooms, effortlessly ping-ponging between silly and whimsical, to dark and foreboding, to quiet and calm, to occasionally horrifying, without ever feeling inconsistent, the juxtaposition is always effective given the context of the game; who can you trust? what's going on? what will happen next?

this isn't to say pocket mirror is just a load of nonsense, it's all very deliberate, but the game keeps you at arms length as to what's really happening and leaves you to interpret all sorts of notes and riddles and pictures and poetry to understand it. a first playthrough will likely be very confusing, as it was for me, and this lent the game this absolutely engrossing atmosphere that felt akin to a very long nightmare, the game does have a structure to it but that only really becomes clear in hindsight, there's not really like a sort of hub area that you return to nor do you really revisit places you've already been, and as i said before only really the vague goal of rediscovering your identity, so the whole game just has this feel of venturing deeper and deeper and not looking back, no idea what will what happen next, and whether what happens next will be pleasant or not, i was on the edge of my seat despite not really understanding what was happening, and my first playthrough felt unlike anything i've really experienced before

that's not to say it was perfect, pocket mirror's gameplay consists entirely of exploration and puzzle solving, there's no combat or anything of the sort, so the only way the game is really able to raise the stakes and kill you is with death traps, such as getting a puzzle wrong, picking the wrong dialogue option, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What trivialises this whole system is the bountiful save points around every corner. if you die, unless you forgot to save, you will usually be seconds away from the spot you died once you reload.

now this does have an upside of encouraging curious players such as myself who want to see what happens in every alternate scenario, there are even multiple achievements for getting a game over in various ways, there are also some situations where an outcome is just completely unpredictable and having to be sent back a long way because of something like that could be quite frustrating. However, the downside of this approach is that it does distance you a little from the character you're playing as, you won't value your life in the same way she does and really think situations through in the way you would if you were really in the character's shoes because there's never really anything to lose is there? this system also encourages trial and error with the puzzles, i really like some of them and enjoyed figuring them out but some are just absolutely baffling and have very strange logic, at least to me, and the worst part is that i still don't understand some of them even now i know the answer, i don't have to because i could very easily go through all the options one by one until i got it right if i got stuck

i was also very let down by the ending, it felt super rushed and didn't feel like much of a culmination of anything really, nor did come with a sort of 'aha!' moment i was expecting where the story finally made sense and everything clicked into place, instead it just kinda ended and then it kicked me into a new game plus

i was bewildered and a little miffed, but after looking it up it turns out i'd gotten the bad ending, and there were four others i could get, i also read into what the game was really about and, i don't want to spoil it (as i want this review to also be a recommendation of the game) the game does elude to it very well and i probably would've figured it out eventually had i just thought about it long enough

over the last week i've now played pocket mirror five times, and done pretty much everything there is to do in it, and god did i love every second of it, this has become such a comfort game for me

going back in and experiencing everything with the knowledge i had made me appreciate the game more and more the more i played it, the pixel art is absolutely gorgeous and every little room feels bespoke and dense with detail, the music is genuinely some of the best i've ever heard, it is consistently pitch perfect of matching the tone of every beat of the journey, and as i said before there are a lot of tones, it is so absolutely crucial to the game's atmosphere and even listening to soundtrack outside of the game i choke up at some of the pieces just because they're so striking

i won't delve too deep into the story, but just something about the way it's told and paced is absolutely captivating to me, and actively trying to interpret all sorts of meanings in the game's dialogue and everything is very fun, you don't spend that much time with any of the characters as it's quite a short game, and i think their dialogue can be quite repetitive, but i ended up really caring about all of them anyway. the way your character ends up relating to them and what happens as a result is really beautiful, and covers topics seen very rarely in media, or at least discussed in such a respectful and sympathetic manner.

that being said though it's important to note that while i did do a little research into the topic the game is mainly about, i'm certainly not an expert, i would love to hear from people more qualified than i am what they think of the game's portrayal of it, especially if they feel it's being misrepresented, but from what i gather on my own the game's intentions are good and it's very tasteful

pocket mirror is one of those games where you just feel the love and passion the people behind it had while they were making it, and it's infectious. as i said it's become a huge comfort for me and any game where i can play it five times in a row is probably doing something right. i was overall mixed on the game's other endings, i definitely liked some more than others, but they all felt a little abrupt to me, but luckily i'm a completionist, meaning i unlocked everything in the extras menu, and i will say the stuff in there could not be more perfect to me and gave me a warm, fuzzy sense of closure, a perfect reminder of the love i have for this game overpowering all of its issues. fuck you it's game of the year