The Mirror Lied

This may be the one game on this site I can think of whose developer went on to actually make it to the big leagues afterwards, relatively speaking. I am talking about, of course, To the Moon, which I still haven't played, despite owning it on both Steam and Green Man Gaming and with everyone praising it to the high heavens (or, to the moon, you could say, eh hehehe *snort*). I downloaded this game a while back, I don't know if it was from Freebird's website or here, but it did say when I opened it up "from the developers of To the Moon" (I discovered the game from here whereupon I discovered that it was by the To the Moon people). This game was made a few years before that game, uploaded here back in 2008, and the user Reives, the one who uploaded the game, being more interactive with the community and with feedback received, but has since seemed to have disappeared from the site. I'm guessing that was a small update added after their breakthrough success and, I guess, so people who somehow stumble upon this by accident know who made it if they weren't sure to continue or not.

But in any case, yes, this is a Freebird Game, and what I believe to be their very first game in fact. If you go on the web page for it they try to make themselves clear "This is NOT a horror game. Nothing will jump at you." If you have to go out of your way to say that, then there's a fair chance that enough people found something "horror-ish" enough about the game to deem it as such. Or going by the last sentence maybe they don't want people to mistake this for a jumpscare-fest which is what everyone thinks nowadays when they read that a game is horror, which truly is a shame. Although I do agree this isn't exactly a "horror" game in the regular sense of the term, it is a game with an atmosphere that is very subtly "off." It's a bit less subtle as the game goes on, but from the beginning in the game's humble indoor spaces the game feels as though a strange phantom is hovering over you. And it turns out that that is at least partially true. Something decides to hover over you by the game's end, though something decidedly more benign... or is it? The many interactions in the game lead you to believe it's something far more sinister - but why? Your guess is as good as anyone's; this isn't a straightforward tale we're looking at here, it's a near-impenetrable wall of 12"-thick titanium symbolism.

It all starts with the title, though that's not apparent until the game's end. The game does mention things about a "birdie" (the one thing you'll see referenced many times in this game, clearly the focal point of this unusual story) lying. But what about a mirror? There are mirrors in the game, but I couldn't interact with them. Is "birdie" meant to be a "mirror" of yourself? Then if it's a lie, what does that speak for the ending? Does it mean there was no bird, or that you never existed? What is its airspeed velocity, and is it African or European? Is... Uh, just... you know what, forget it. I've seen at least one interesting interpretation I might bring up so this can wait.

What struck me upon playing immediately was what an absolute beauty the game is. The look and perspective don't deviate too far from the "RPG Maker style" if you will but the embellishments they've added on everything, from colors, details and lighting is fantastic. Another thing - the mouse cursor. While movement and interaction with the keyboard proved much preferable to me, I was still surprised to see it. The only other RPG Maker game I know that has the mouse as an option is Palette, a game made in 1998, when... such a thing was doable I guess. It's no regular mouse control either, they fancied this one up all point-'n'-click adventure game-like. You hover your mouse over something, a different icon will appear depending on what it is. If it's an item that's locked, a key icon will appear. For lamps, a lightbulb, Interactive objects in general... something different besides the mouse, I can't remember what it was. It's not exactly necessary since it's a small house environment with small rooms, and finding what you need to interact with is pain-free. Still a neat thing to have.

Puzzles are basic - if they could be called puzzles. Get a key, open something, get another key to open something else to get an item, and so on. A few inventory puzzles, one where you water a plant over the course of the game til it grows to Jack's beanstalk length, shooting a lock off a door (yeah you get a gun in this game), getting an access card to use a computer (huh? What kind of home computers have access cards for security? This part was as confusing as the game's story/symbolism itself) and using pesticides to kill the bugs crawling all over something you need to climb. Anything else is just there to interact with one way or another. You can check ticking grandfather clocks to look at the time - in fact, time would seem to be a big part of this game too. You get phone calls at points (timed, so you need to answer them quickly before they go away), one telling me the time was "3:26." I looked at the clock next to the phone at was 3:something alright, but I don't think it was 3:26. When you check your computer you find all sorts of panicked e-mails telling you to kill this birdie at all costs, because I dunno it's the harbinger of the apocalypse maybe (that is a possibility - I'll go over the one interpretation I read in a moment). But one thing that sticks out is that every e-mail has a timestamp next to it. And in the downstairs area there is a poster hanging that when you read goes "2:00 4:00 00:00:00:00" Something like that. What is this all about?

Alright so now I'll talk about an interpretation based on what Gibmaker found and posted in his review. It's very interesting and makes more sense out of some things, for me anyway. It doesn't answer everything, and these may not even be answers at all but it's something.

Alright, so there's not much else I can say about the game. I have played many games like this and this is easily one of the better ones in my opinion. The developer's eventual widespread recognition was well-deserved based on this. The art style is incredible, the atmosphere is haunting without being too obvious about it, I do love the levels of interactivity it gives you compared to other games, and all the fascinating details in the surroundings leave you a strange tale to piece together where maybe not everyone's will match, but there's enough there that SOME conclusions can be drawn. Seeing how my interpretation was based on a detail someone else found, it also shows that there are a lot of things you can easily miss too. And that that something that someone else found was a well-hidden reference to an actual something means there's probably more obscure clues beneath the surface here that we're all missing here. Even beyond the symbol-hunting, I managed to end the game with a small key in my inventory that went who-knows-where. There's a locked piano I never managed to unlock, and I believe I had that key at the time when I looked at it. So there you go! While mechanically a simple, short and easy game what it packs within its shell of simplicity, shortness and easiness is far more than I've seen of other games on here that could be described as such.

Another thing I didn't see mentioned in any of the reviews here: once you finish the game, it'll automatically close out. Start it back up for a cute little bonus.