For those that love the genre of pre-rendered FMV games, I'm not sure there is a more exemplary game of the genre that is genuinely incredibly good all the way through. Every problem with past System Sacom FMV games is fixed here, and the game almost acheives what most FMV games fail to do: you feel as if you are in an evironment which is fully able to be interacted with. the on rails vibes are really toned down here. Music and setting creates a really specific atmosphere, and all the characters leave an impression. The only issue is that the game drags on disc two with a location change, but this was the most charming game I have played in years. 7/10 game, but a 10/10 experience. They really don't make things like this anymore.

There is a music room on the lower floor of the mansion where a butterfly flutters around portraits of composers and musical instruments. A harp and flute plays a hauntingly repetitive melody that looms throughout the room. The butterfly speaks to the protagonist. “I remember when I was human. I was on a small stage together with my friends and I played the piano. Now I cannot even touch the keys. I had felt there was no other choice. So at the time I thought it would be wonderful to be like a butterfly. To be carefree. I know now that I made the wrong decision.”

I could almost cry listening to the butterfly musician recount her story of rejecting her body. In Mansion of Hidden Souls, people come to the mansion and are forced to shed their mortal human bodies, for immortal butterfly forms trapped to static rooms of the people they once were. Her passions drove her so far that she immortalized them. Consequently, she lost the ability to pursue them.

While I am not I’m not trapped in an immortal static plane, I have struggled the past year with the consequences of a long-term case of CPTSD burnout. Day after day I fluctuate between being paralyzed in bed or doing everything I can to distract myself from the inability to function the ways I spent years doing. I flutter over the desired possibilities of art, creative practice, friendships, and self-realization. Then I spend days shuttering and writhing to work up the ability to pursue them, many times only ending up with overwhelming emotions of pain that erase any passions that were originally there. (Being able to write this long of a review in a cohesive manner has honestly taken me a massive amount of practicing emotional balancing and self-care).

Throughout this all, I’m constantly wishing I could be more, that I could do more. I spent 10 years of my life pursuing my passions with an unfiltered drive that left any sense of care or pace behind. In a way I feel like the musician butterfly, trapped in a body and place that is the consequence of my drive but lacking understanding of my own limitations.

I recognize that Mansion of Hidden Souls isn’t attempting to make nuanced statements about burnout or the limitations of the soul. In fact, the butterflies of the mansion could easily be interpreted as merely a hollow interpretation for the spirit as luminescent spectacle. The beginning of the game presents the butterflies as a silly little fairytale told by the two siblings grandmother. It’s a story that, alongside the voice acting, largely feels childish and whimsical. Alongside this, each character of the mansion feels like caricature. They each speak with poor fake international accents and, at first, feel like plain fairytale antagonists attempting to undermine the protagonist just for the sake of being evil.

However, as I ventured through the mansion and met more of its’ residents I was struck by how the caricatured emotions each of them held towards the protagonist were a reflection of their feelings towards their lives and residency in the mansion. The painter, the musician, the little girl, the game room attendant; they are not souls that unwillingly came to the mansion. Rather, their dialogue with the player implies that the mansion was the only path forward. Despite their transformation to static beings and loss of interaction with the material world, a chance to immortalize their beauty was impossible to pass up.

Each resident’s room materializes and spatializes their personas. The little girl’s room is filled with floral patterns, plush furniture, and pink curtains concealing the holistic view of the room from being seen. The artist’s room feels like it was built to be unfinished. The wood of the bannisters and walls make it seem as though you are in an attic. The canvases feel like there was some work in progress that was interrupted. Each room is filled a looming aura of the past. They not only feel trapped in a static image of what they once were, but they also feel forgotten and lost. As though no one has ever come to look for them. No one has ever appreciated the beauty that they sought to immortalize.

Despite this, there is still a beauty in these forgotten rooms in that if no one ever sees them you, the player, still did. The artists room of images are striking to look at and tell a story of an artist’s development from outdoor portraits to psychological abstracts. The musicians room of instruments and composers tells a story of someone who held deep compassion for their medium. The little girl’s room is exuberant with indulging in the fun of femininity, but clearly has parts of herself that she doesn’t want anyone to know about.

Looking at the rooms of the hidden mansion, I find some sort of comfort. In my recovery towards finding meaning in my life’s acts, it can be hard to find any hope and fall into a pit of nihilistic despair. Yet, these rooms, they would argue that despite all my struggles my beauty remains. That even if I find myself unable to engage with the activities, community, and practice which I hold such passion for, my history with them and my present actions still retain meaning.

I wonder if I became a butterfly what my own room would look like and what would be inside. Perhaps it would be filled with a collection of niche video games. Perhaps it would be filled with love letters of those whom I held in such high regard throughout my life. Perhaps it would celebrate the femininity I so luckily found in myself.

In the basement of the Mansion a librarian butterfly pins other butterflies in display cases, infatuated by their beauty.

The librarian is positioned to discomfort the player. Their position is that of enjoyment of the very thing that the player fears. Disembodiment and loss of humanity. They even speak in disgust of the player’s “human” body. But perhaps there is something beautiful that the librarian sees that we, in the position of the brother protagonist, cannot see. Perhaps in the midst of chasing after retaining what the brother has as a human, we are neglecting the beauty that remains as a butterfly.