Broken Mirror

Intro

"Broken Mirror" is a short horror game developed by Ikoru using RPG Maker VX Ace that was created for the Theme Roulette 4 event held back in August of 2021. An event that gave developers an image, a theme, and a genre to build a game around. In the case of this project Ikoru was given the theme mythical, the horror genre, and the below image to build a game around.



Though if this game truly qualifies as horrifying is debatable in my opinion. It definitely has elements of the horror genre, but the apparent lack of gore tends to make this game come across as creepy rather than the stuff nightmares are made of. Though that's probably because I haven't spent that much time thinking about the "reward" our friend was given at the end of the game. I was a bit too distracted by the game breaking bug I found in this game despite it having gone through two updates since the event. So before I discuss the plot of this short game I'll talk about the major bug I discovered that makes beating the game impossible.

Game Breaking Bug

If you go into your inventory and attempt to use the empty bottle it will disappear from your inventory.



And without the empty bottle you can't collect the water needed to melt the lock and collect the crystal you need to take back to the cat living in the forest. As such the game becomes impossible to complete. Thankfully this game is pretty short so you probably won't lose that much time even if you triggered this game breaking bug. And the game contains an auto save feature which would probably allow you to load before the bottle was lost assuming you didn't leave the room after losing the bottle. Admittedly I haven't tested that since I tend to save rather often when playing horror games just in case something jumps out and kills me out of the blue. Though it does feel a bit weird I'm apparently the first person to ever find this bug considering this game takes around ten minutes to beat.

Story
Summary

We play as a seemingly nameless flying mouse character whose best friend is a hamster that loves to tease him about being a coward so invites him to a trip into the depths of the forest after telling him a horror story. A story that centered around the uncle of a friend, of a friend, of a friend. So it's definitely true and not made up nonsense like all of those other tales about things that go bump in the night. Of course wanting to prove were no longer a helpless little pinkie we agree to journey with him into the depths of the forest. Though why anyone would be scared of going there is beyond me considering the travel time from the entrance to the forest to the depths of the forest is less than 30 seconds. I guess the forest around our hometown has been greatly reduced by the local logging industry. At any rate upon arriving at the forest depths we run into a weird cat obsessed with mirrors who freaks out when our friend shatters a mirror using a seesaw.

Were then presented with a false choice. The kind that pop up in "Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories" for the PS1 where your presented with two options, but only one of them is actually selectable. So after agreeing to fix our friend's dumb mistake we head into a creepy cave in search of the "Full Moon Crystal". Of course along the way we need to solve a few puzzles and get chased by a giant monster, but the real insult is when our friend decides to pull a fast one in order to get the cat's reward all for himself.

After catching back up and learning that the cat is nowhere to be found we join our "friend" in heading back to town where our mom tells us to brush our teeth before going to bed. Of course, being a bad boy we decide to skip brushing our teeth and never notice the creature in the mirror.



Minor Gripes

During the horror story told at the beginning of the game one of the lines of dialogue doesn't make sense.



This line implies they found the missing uncle and searched his body for hours, but the next line of dialogue implies they never found him. So this line should be "They searched for him for hours and hours."

Another minor gripe I have with the story is that the mirror that gets broken by the seesaw isn't underneath it when we initially walk past the seesaw.



So how it even get there for our friend to supposedly smash in the first place is beyond me.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

On the plus side this game moves at a pretty fast pace, but considering this game takes around ten minutes to beat on a blind playthrough. That really isn't a surprise. On the downside the nameless nature of the characters makes it a lot harder to get invested in the stuff that happens to them since they feel like the nameless grunts you throw at the enemy in games like "Advance Wars". Though I suppose it is fitting that our "friend" ultimately suffers a horrific fate considering he pushes us down a hole in the cave with little consideration if we would get hurt or not for an unspecified reward. So he was kind of asking for it by the end of the game.

Gameplay

For the most part you just walk around and interact with people. Albeit most of the conversations in this game are rather pointless like the shopkeeper telling you she doesn't accept gummies as currency.



At any rate outside of talking to a few people we also get to explore the dark cave and solve a sliding puzzle with a slight twist where we don't slide, but the object were trying to get to a specific spot on the map does. Though solving this puzzle isn't that hard in my opinion. At least once you know how the object moves upon being pushed/kicked by the player.

We also get to use items in this game a bit, but those uses are done for us when we interact with an object with the proper item in our inventory. So this part of the game doesn't feel as interactive as it could be. Though, I suppose it being automated means the player doesn't have to open up the menu at any point in this game in order to beat it. Though if that's a positive or negative is going to vary from player to player in my opinion.

Graphics

As far as I'm aware the game's graphics are entirely custom which is always a nice touch. Though, I'll admit I'm not fond of one of the portraits. Though I probably wasn't meant to be a fan of that one considering it's pretty obvious from said portrait that the cat decided to turn our best friend into a skin suit and is now walking around in his dead flesh like that bug does with Edgar in "Men in Black".

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is rather forgettable in my opinion as far as the background music goes. Though, I'll admit that tends to be the case for most games with me. So that just means the game's background music and sound effects were average as far as I was concerned. In fact, the most memorable aspect of this part of the game in my opinion is that the characters make noises while talking. And these noises sound like those you hear while holding conversations in "Animal Crossing" on the GameCube. At least that's what they reminded me of.

Conclusion

"Broken Mirror" is a hard one for me to rate in some respects. On one hand this game was originally an event game that's merely been updated to slightly improve the overall experience so it still feels a lot like a game that was made within a very small time window. On the other hand this game contains a game breaking bug. A bug that no one else has apparently ever encountered. So it's possible to play this game from start to finish without ever finding it, but I usually do hold game breaking bugs against a game even if I'm one of the few oddballs that would ever find it. As such, I'm going to give this game a 3 out of 5. For an event game it's pretty solid even if it is really short, but that game breaking bug can't be ignored in my opinion.