Twin Mirror is part of January’s Humble Choice.
“The small town of Basswood will be changed forever by ex-investigative journalist Sam Higgs in this thrilling narrative experience from award-winning studio DON’T NOD. Will you find the truth – no matter the cost?”
The game costs 27,99 €. It has previously been on sale for 60 to 75 % off. How long to beat says it takes about 6 to 11 hours to finish.
As the little game description’s snippet says, this is a game from DON’T NOD, the developers of Life is Strange which is probably their best-known game. I loved Life is Strange, but didn’t enjoy Life is Strange 2. I tried to play Tell me Why, but it didn’t keep me engaged for long. It was the setting, maybe the characters, the story itself mostly that I couldn’t get attached to. However, I always like the voice actors and actresses as well as the general atmosphere that they create with their games.
So, when I saw that Twin Mirror was in this month’s Choice bundle and after reading the game’s description, I knew I had to give it a try! I didn’t know what it would suck me in for a few hours… thankfully, I am still on vacation. So instead of being productive and getting things done here at home, I spent my free time playing and finishing Twin Mirror!
I don’t want to put any game spoilers here, so I will try to not say much about the story at all.
As always, the voice-overs are really good (I played the English version). The characters are believable. Grief looks like grief here. In Life is Strange, the main character found out that she was able to manipulate the time and that was the main game feature. Here, our character is able to enter his Mind Palace and focus on what is happening in order to come to logical solutions.
Sometimes the UI is clunky. That is, I can see the mouse symbol, but the key I am supposed to hit in order to interact with the item doesn’t appear (usually it’s a W or an S). Or the key does appear but instead of interacting with the item, my charactersmoves forwards or backwards (W and S…). In one case, not even the mouse symbol appeared. I was certain I had found a clue but no matter how I approached the item, nothing appeared. I only went back there to try again after I read online that it indeed was a clue.
I don’t think that the game is on the same level as Life is Strange. It is much shorter. It doesn’t have as many characters and side stories. The UI bit really annoyed me at times. The lip sync is really bad (although that doesn’t bother me because German TV often has dubbed films and series and I grew up with that). But having finished the story, I can say that what it does have is the emotional effect. By the end of it, I was sitting on the edge of my seat because I had really grown attached to the characters and needed to know how it ends.
I don’t replay story games to get different endings, because for me, it spoils the experience. But I am still glad I can restart from different game scenes. So maybe I can see another ending just for the sake of seeing what else is there.
My personal verdict, in case you couldn’t have guessed it: If you like such games, then this is a great addition to this month’s Humble Choice! I don’t think I would buy it for its full price. It is a rather short game, after all.
Nerdy Bookahs 
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