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Pocket Mirror Classic (2016) is an original mystery horror adventure game made using RPG MAKER VX ACE. During the development of this game we have gotten our inspiration from various japanese RPG MAKER games of the same genre such as Ib and The Witch's House which have motivated us to create our own.

※ The game isn't suited for people with a nervous disposition for things such as horror and graphical horror such as blood and brutal deaths.

※ Please note that it relies on an exceptional amout of symbolism which may be hard to understand throughout the first playthrough, so multiple playthroughs may be advised.

※ To get the best experience out of the game we recomment the player to use headphones and adjust the screen brightness accordingly.

Check out the remastered version, Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum, on Steam now!

Latest Blog

Pocket Mirror ver. 1.3

Changelog ver. 1.3

- Replacement of various uncredited resources with original resources.
- Bug fix.
- Atribution of proper resource credits.
  • Completed
  • PM
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • Puzzle RPG
  • 01/22/2014 02:45 PM
  • 03/15/2023 07:01 AM
  • 07/22/2016
  • 1396707
  • 483
  • 66247

Posts

Great! I've been waiting for this!
YES! I can't wait to play it :D Hopefully soon I'll be able to play the full game, also hope you don't mind me doing a Let's play of this? Naturally all credit will be given ^^
Yes both the let's play and live play is allowed! ヾ(@°▽°@)ノ Thank you all for your support!
I've just played the demo and it is quite and interesting game, the atmosphere is nice and the plot is giving me high expectations, looking forward to play the finished game ;)
Very pretty and nice atmosphere. I'm interested in seeing more...
Been following this on tumblr for a while, glad I can keep an eye on it here too. :D
BurningTyger
Hm i Wonder if i can pul somethi goff here/
1289
hhm. evne wiht the clues on th ebog ther is sitl much mystery.
I played a little bit of the demo. I really like the aesthetics and ideas of this game. The interactivity is really nice too. The only thing that's bugging me and keeping me from wanting to keep playing is the walking movement is annoyingly twitchy. I'm not sure if it's just me getting this but it seems the player stops for half a second between each step and it's just painful. If this is fixed I would love to play more of the game.
people say it's a demo ,when it will be released ? i hope it's soon .
You know that I’m a preverbal sucker for anything that has cute animu girls with sexy shiny graphics in it. Consider me sold!

This is great, ‘cause I’ve been looking for a couple of “newer / 2014” games to play and review, so I guess that this one’s going in the pile. *subs and adds to playlist*
I have just completed the demo.
Love the character and the background music.
I have to say that i'm reallyyyyy looking forward to the full game.
Keep it up!
Sadly the preview is so short, but i really love it.
The art is pretty and so lovely!
I love how that little girl goes, i love the doll and the whole scenery.
You can see how much love and effort is put in this.
I am really looking forward to the release.
Started the demo! About 5 minutes in, and I already have to say:

Take out the gasping/choking/crying/totally loli audio clips. It's weird. It's breaking me out of any kind of immersion and making me feel like this is gonna go down a total lolicon route, and I am super not into that.

Seriously: your game would be a million times better if she wasn't making those noises! Otherwise the audio and atmosphere is nice, but as is, I'm just headdesking at all the creepy gasps.

EDIT: Also, I've hit the end of the demo already! Brace yourselves: this may sound kind of blunt, but please understand I'm trying to be helpful and not mindlessly shitting on you.

I have to say, aside from the visuals, I'm not that impressed. What I saw is a really pretty "click everything until you find your next plot token" game, which all in all isn't interesting or fun! I dunno if your team is more story based than gameplay based, but personal I always try to look at a game and go, "if I didn't give two shits about the story, would this game be fun enough to keep on playing anyway?" As is, this feels like the kind of game that, if someone was interested in the story, they'd be rushing to get to the next cutscene and not enjoying what they were actually doing to get to that point. I would take a serious look at the game play and figure out a way to improve it. If it's about exploration, make it easier to explore! Open every door in that foggy room right off the bat, rather than forcing me to clonk my head against everything until I figure out how to open the next door. Get me to poke around things and find marbles, then make me arrange them in a specific, puzzle-y way. That's one route you could take, but there are any other number of paths that could improve the gameplay -- I would highly recommend exploring them!

Next part: I don't care about the main character, which, in a game like this, is a problem. Why should I care about protecting her from getting hurt? What are the consequences for me failing and getting a game over? There are none, so I hit the end and was like "welp guess that's over. That was a thing that I played." If I don't care about the MC not dying, why should I care about playing this game? What's to prevent me from recklessly going into the next room, even though a guillotine might chop lil MC's head off?

A great way to make the audience care would be to give her some personality, since she had none aside from "nice little girl". If I check a stool and all she says "This is a pretty stool", what was the point of clicking on the stool? What was the point of that dialogue if not to improve the atmosphere or show me more about her character? If you wanted to establish that there's nice furniture, why not have her say "Yeesh, this is some fancy shit for such a dingy place!", or "Golly this reminds me of my grandma's ottoman! She'd have a stroke if she saw a stool this nice get this dusty", or "This stool looks like it belongs to some bourgeoisie scum. *spits on oppressor class furniture*"? You can really easily insert personality using methods like this, and before the player knows it, they'll totally want to hug the crap outta your characters.

I guess the thing that is really irking me about the MC is that, because of the absence of a name and any kind of personality, she feels more like a body that these bad things are happening to for the viewers' titillation, rather than a fully fledged person in a scary situation. The loli-gasps really contribute to that image, so, again, I really urge you take them out or record some better ones (which it looks like you may be?). This makes the game take on a very creepy, predatory nature -- and I don't mean creepy in a "ooh, horror game chills!" kind of way, I mean creepy in a "this is rape-y as heck" way. That is not a good creepy! That is an objectifying and icky creepy.

Basically yeah I would really reconsider how you're framing this, since as is it's rubbing me the wrong way, and probably not in the way you folks intended. I'll certainly pop back in when the final release shows up to see if anything's different, and I may write a more concrete review then, depending on how everything turns out. I hope the rest of your development goes well!
author=emmych
Started the demo! About 5 minutes in, and I already have to say:

Take out the gasping/choking/crying/totally loli audio clips. It's weird. It's breaking me out of any kind of immersion and making me feel like this is gonna go down a total lolicon route, and I am super not into that.

Seriously: your game would be a million times better if she wasn't making those noises! Otherwise the audio and atmosphere is nice, but as is, I'm just headdesking at all the creepy gasps.

EDIT: Also, I've hit the end of the demo already! Brace yourselves: this may sound kind of blunt, but please understand I'm trying to be helpful and not mindlessly shitting on you.

I have to say, aside from the visuals, I'm not that impressed. What I saw is a really pretty "click everything until you find your next plot token" game, which all in all isn't interesting or fun! I dunno if your team is more story based than gameplay based, but personal I always try to look at a game and go, "if I didn't give two shits about the story, would this game be fun enough to keep on playing anyway?" As is, this feels like the kind of game that, if someone was interested in the story, they'd be rushing to get to the next cutscene and not enjoying what they were actually doing to get to that point. I would take a serious look at the game play and figure out a way to improve it. If it's about exploration, make it easier to explore! Open every door in that foggy room right off the bat, rather than forcing me to clonk my head against everything until I figure out how to open the next door. Get me to poke around things and find marbles, then make me arrange them in a specific, puzzle-y way. That's one route you could take, but there are any other number of paths that could improve the gameplay -- I would highly recommend exploring them!

Next part: I don't care about the main character, which, in a game like this, is a problem. Why should I care about protecting her from getting hurt? What are the consequences for me failing and getting a game over? There are none, so I hit the end and was like "welp guess that's over. That was a thing that I played." If I don't care about the MC not dying, why should I care about playing this game? What's to prevent me from recklessly going into the next room, even though a guillotine might chop lil MC's head off?

A great way to make the audience care would be to give her some personality, since she had none aside from "nice little girl". If I check a stool and all she says "This is a pretty stool", what was the point of clicking on the stool? What was the point of that dialogue if not to improve the atmosphere or show me more about her character? If you wanted to establish that there's nice furniture, why not have her say "Yeesh, this is some fancy shit for such a dingy place!", or "Golly this reminds me of my grandma's ottoman! She'd have a stroke if she saw a stool this nice get this dusty", or "This stool looks like it belongs to some bourgeoisie scum. *spits on oppressor class furniture*"? You can really easily insert personality using methods like this, and before the player knows it, they'll totally want to hug the crap outta your characters.

I guess the thing that is really irking me about the MC is that, because of the absence of a name and any kind of personality, she feels more like a body that these bad things are happening to for the viewers' titillation, rather than a fully fledged person in a scary situation. The loli-gasps really contribute to that image, so, again, I really urge you take them out or record some better ones (which it looks like you may be?). This makes the game take on a very creepy, predatory nature -- and I don't mean creepy in a "ooh, horror game chills!" kind of way, I mean creepy in a "this is rape-y as heck" way. That is not a good creepy! That is an objectifying and icky creepy.

Basically yeah I would really reconsider how you're framing this, since as is it's rubbing me the wrong way, and probably not in the way you folks intended. I'll certainly pop back in when the final release shows up to see if anything's different, and I may write a more concrete review then, depending on how everything turns out. I hope the rest of your development goes well!


Thank you for your honest opinion, we appreciate your criticism and bluntness. However, everything we did on the demo was on purpose; from the lack of personality, to the "forcing the player to bonk their heads on things", to the voice acting.

Although some aspects are amateur-ish we are currently reviewing them and fixing what we think could be improved. Because this was our first attempt to put the game together we do recognize various, serious faults. Please do take into consideration this is only the first part of the game, which will be altered once the full game is released; consider it more of a teaser and experiment than something we released to "impress", as it is only a 10 minute demo.

About the "rape-y" atmosphere, we disagree on your point of view and ask of you not to look into things in such a manner when we did not intend to imply anything by it. It is simple voice acting and it's actually similar to what's present on Mad Father.
@emmych ,
u have doesnt played rpg maker games ip also mad father and much more games have all the same standarts of voice acting and it´s normal i play rpg maker games 8 yeahrs and love them u must see the story and not the problems about voice that can be loli
Thank you for your honest opinion, we appreciate your criticism and bluntness. However, everything we did on the demo was on purpose; from the lack of personality, to the "forcing the player to bonk their heads on things", to the voice acting.

I don't see how this refutes those points! even if frustrating gameplay and poor characterization are part of a brilliant plan to be completed later on ingame, first impressions are very important, and setting up for a later twist doesn't excuse poor design. if your setup involves making your game deliberately unfun and uninteresting, you need to re-assess your plan.

About the "rape-y" atmosphere, we disagree on your point of view and ask of you not to look into things in such a manner when we did not intend to imply anything by it. It is simple voice acting and it's actually similar to what's present on Mad Father.

I think framing it as something emmych is accusing you of is coming out with the wrong impression. rather, understand that it's very important to have at least a working knowledge of the subtext and the potential mis-reads in your character depictions. no one is accusing you of being some gross anime nerd -- just suggesting that you be more careful when copying cues from a genre that's absolutely swamped with gross anime nerds.

the process is thinking, thinking, and more thinking. I understand the enthusiasm about a popular game and the desire to make something like it, but to make good use of those elements you need to understand why they were put there in the first place. that knowledge is also hugely important for avoiding skeezy unintended connotations. it's sad to say, but a lot of that stuff was intentional for some disgusting asshole way back in history, and the fact that those elements have been grandfathered into game design and held up as some pure, untouchable thing is enormously unhealthy. 'another game did it, so it must be okay' as a justification is shallow and ultimately damages your own project.

@emmych ,
u have doesnt played rpg maker games ip also mad father and much more games have all the same standarts of voice acting and it´s normal i play rpg maker games 8 yeahrs and love them u must see the story and not the problems about voice that can be loli