Phileas's Mirror

Loic is a normal, modern day man with a job, girlfriend, friends and a loan for an apartment. His life seems to be going on a beaten track, but sometimes he wonders if he's really satisfied with all of this.

This is how the author briefly describes the plot of "Phileas's Mirror", not wanting to reveal more. This is how the title really begins - when the hero lives a routine and the player has a hard time expecting what will happen next.

The game we're dealing with is about two hours long adventure game that tries to have a message. Let me say now that it is the idea that man has his fate in his hands and that his future may be different. As for the standards of games that try to influence the player's thinking, I must say that this attempt was successful. All we see gradually reveals this idea, and the story turns out to be evocative enough to be emotional. Unfortunately, as is often the case in such productions, the gameplay does not equal the story, but more about it in a moment.



We get to know Loic during his routine. Every day he wakes up, takes a shower, takes the filthy subway to work, and finally returns home. Although he graduated from university, he has a stable, well-paid job, he lacks something in life. His girlfriend pressures him to get married - but he remains undecided. In this first segment of the game, we meet several side characters - Rafael, Loic's partying friend, Mr. Gonzales - a drunken bankrupt and a boy Lucas whose mother has cancer.

The driving force behind the story is the eponymous Phileas. A mysterious figure breaks Loic's routine one day and presents him with two alternatives for his life. The first, positive, shows a dreamed, fabulous world of adventures and fun, the second, negative - dark horror in which violence is intertwined with sex. In these two visions, we also see side characters becoming positive or negative curves of what they represent - although Raphael first becomes a symbol of world discovery, play and adventure, then narcotic hopelessness and debauchery.



The drawbacks in this story are a few issues in some scenes and the low interactivity during play, despite couple of meaningless dialouge.
The beginning is also a bit boring and does not show the goal to the player, luckily it is short. The biggest problem, however, is gameplay. There isn't much of it here, but these few fights and skill games are just annoying - they pop up suddenly and don't add much. Fortunately, the most difficult ones can be ignored. After all, a lot of dialogue is boring, especially with random NPCs.

Other than that, the game is well-directed, although it doesn't reach the top of what's possible in RM. During the trip we will see many good looking locations, the diversity of which is a plus, although for many the maps may be overloaded. We see a real enormity of various resources concentrated in small spaces, which makes it difficult to focus on something specific. The music is competently arranged, but hardly stands out.

To sum up, "Phileas's Mirror" is an interesting game that shows its advantages only towards the end, which can be quite tricky when recommending it. For me it turned out to be a good game, although it strained me a bit. Probably the key is its message and how important it will turn out to be for the player.