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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
  • 1397616
  • 483
  • 66256

Posts

Hey, I'm gonna respond to some of the things!

author=PM
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'm honestly unsure as to why you did this! Would you care to elaborate a bit about your decision?
Since, at least in my opinion, a demo should be about showing off something that's supposed to generate interest for your game. As is, it turns me off wanting to play the full game. I have no reason to care about what comes next, aside from the fact the game is pretty, and I can enjoy the pretty from looking at screenshots.

My question to you is this: why should I play this game? What does this game have to offer that any of the other hundreds of thousands of zillions of games out there can't offer me, only better? What is special about Pocket Mirror? What's supposed to draw me in? (After playing Mad Father and seeing the similarities between this game and that, why should I then play your game as well?)

The demo was too short for me to get a grasp on any plot beyond "little girl in a scary castle" -- why should I care about THIS little girl? Why should I care about THIS scary castle? Why should I play this game to get a good story and a chill when I could just boot up Amnesia again?

If the demo isn't showing off the REAL game play, or how the MC REALLY is, what was the point of putting it out? Why not just put up a game page, and maybe a video or two?

You say you put it out to impress, but it didn't impress me. Once you pull back the graphics, there isn't anything that impressive in here. That is the feedback I'm giving you! Pretty graphics do not a gam mak, and I'm telling you this as a person who has watched many a gam get makked in the last few years.

author=PM
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.
Sorry, buds, but the fact is you have put out a thing and this is the criticism I have based on what I saw. I WISH I'd had to look deeply to discover rape-y vibes, but the fact is, intentionally or not, it's in plain sight. Your main character sounds like she's getting nailed, not like she's scared! I don't know if any of you have ever been or been near a scared little girl before, but she wouldn't sound like this.

As for it's similarities to Mad Father: ha ha, I actually ended up playing that tonight in order to get some context, and there are A LOT of similarities to Mad Father going on. I won't delve into it too far, but I feel like you're following Mad Father's template a little too closely (little girl, creepy castle, creepy dolls, mysterious force surrounding the girl... even the gems and the marbles seemed similar). Time will tell if this blossoms off into something completely different, I suppose.

But anyway, we're focusing on the voices: true, it does sound a lot like what's in Mad Father, but there's two problems with this: 1) PM uses the sounds for almost every text box -- Mad Father uses them sparingly (well, liberally, but more sparingly than Pocket Mirror). 2) Just because Mad Father does it doesn't make it a good idea. Mad Father has button mashing events and instadeaths, which are pretty much universally panned by anyone who has ever written about the survival horror genre. When you add something to your game, you need a reason better than "because X game did it" What does it add to YOUR game? Why do YOU want to have it in your game?

As for why the voices are tripping all sorts of bad child porny red-flags for me... honestly I don't want to get into it if you're not willing to listen. The fact is that the voices in your game sound like they could be in porn, and it's weird. It jerks me out of the game and prevents me from focusing on the story and task at hand, which is poor choice for game design. (seriously: I ain't gonna link you any, but if you go look up some hentai, you will hear the sounds you have in this game or ones that are similar.)

Anyway, this is the last I'll write on it, but I can pretty much guarantee I won't be the last person to criticize your game. Even if most folks disagree about the voice acting and creepy overtones, I'm certain that other people will notice at least some of the problems that I've pointed out. I would really, really urge you give these things a second look. Really hammer down WHY you've made certain design decisions. Don't be satisfied with "because x game did it/because that's what this genre is like" -- figure out why you've done what you've done with your game.

You don't have to follow a template set out by someone else -- be creative! Do something new and exciting! Don't settle for something cliched and overdone because it's safe. Go out of the box and make something cool because you wanna do it. Be a pioneer!

Again, best wishes for the rest of development. I sincerely hope you at least hear this criticism and reflect on the decisions you've made thus far.

EDIT: I HADN'T NOTICED MAWK HAD POSTED since this literally sat half written while i took the time to play Mad Father but yeah there see someone else came along to critique your game
Thank you for your criticism once again, we apreciate it.

The thing is, and we hope we're making things clear enough to clear any doubts about this matter, we are not following any previous horror game closely. Mad Father was an example we used for you to understand where the idea for the voice acting had come from, that simple. It inspired us to try out something new, we didn't copy it or any other horror game out there.

Although we do apreciate your criticism we also do know what we're doing, with what intentions we're doing it and how we are going to do it. That includes creativity, which we do not lack, and original content.

If by any chance you did not enjoy the demo and have been "turned off" to play the whole game once it is released it is your right not to play it and to not enjoy it. We are not here to please anyone, we're here to make a game the way we want it to be and the way our team has imagined it. We do not need to specify why people should like this game, nor to tell you emmych why you should feel like you should care about the main character. We're not here to satisfy anyone, we're here to release our game both for our own sake and anyone who gives it a chance and enjoys it in the future and that is what we are going to do.

We have released as much details about the game as we wish to and will continue to do so, as we have not revealed the plot there is no need to justify what is present on the demo nor is there a need to explain it.

And, as we've said before, this is a simple demo and we consider it to be more of an experiment that something we have released especially to impress people. Things will change and major changes will be made as well, it is up to you and anyone to wait until we've made them or to not wait and not give it a chance at alç. Not everyone has to like it and not everyone needs to think what we're doing it right; either like it or hate it, it's your own personal choice.

With this we are not trying to be rude, nor are we trying to excuse ourselves. We're just asking you to not judge a book by its cover, but if you must we won't force you to love it nor will we force anyone else to do it.
well. here's the beginning of something I've seen happen before.
Well this game is pretty interesting even tough i found a lot of littel mistakes like:

no single clue what you should do or when talking to that twinkling thing it always gives you the same answer and you always get the stone from it. Also why cant you walk over the finger when you can walk over the flowers? I also wonder why you have to talk to the mirror twice and why you cant talk to the mirror when the finger is inside the room? By the way you need to step back before you can talk to the mirror again.In the room with the holes, when you set up all the stones except the mirror itself, some mysterious force is blocking your way to the lowest door.

I mean you said in some comment above that you did some mistakes on purpose for the demo but i just wantet to tell you in case you really forgot something, so lets talk about the things i liked.

I like the Maincharakter. The voice acting is cute,the art looks good and i think being a littel quiet matches such loli charakters.I also like that she has got some different emotions.The style of the game is also nice.i like the layout of the titel,The font also matches and i like the design of the messagboxes.I love the writing style and way how the story is told (even though i could not see much of it yet).The game over movie is a nice idea! i have never seen something like that before. And i like the sounds she is making when she walks.
I'm really looking forward to play the completed game.
The demo was very interesting and your artstile is great!
Played it. I think I either died or it was a demo T_T Story could have probably been better...
Hi! I just finished playing the demo and I must say that I really like it so far! I loved the visuals, I thought it was very fancy and a nice touch. However there were a couple things I saw that I disliked.
It didn't make me think very much. I understand that it's just a demo and that there is more story to go through, but I wanted more of a challenge and puzzle instead of just "click and find".
I also thought that with finding the orbs, the transition music played too long. Normally when people (and me) play games like this, they skip through transitions like that. I found that I had to wait until the music was over until I could continue. I really liked the game aside from those few pointers. I can't wait for more!
Main hero is just adorable and her voice-acting made this even better sounded. That's just nice to look at all this from her point of view. yes, she is confused, scared and we can understand that by her reactions.
Thanks very much from this short, but pleasured demo. Keep it making ~

p.s. Emmych, your crits a pure ball of hatred.
User was warned for this post
I can actually understand most of emmych's points. I, personally, do like the MC's voice, but it could be a bit more down to earth. A bit less cute-y - maybe that's just my personal preference. She does sound really professional, though.

The art and visuals are wonderful, there's no denying that. But I also thought that the game wasn't really a game. Which is a shame, since the premise sounds really interesting. As it is now the game is more visual novel than actual game.

I need more puzzles, more stuff to interact with, more possibilities. I need more descriptions that flesh out the MC a bit. I need more than a pretty looking, interactive visual novel of some sorts to think of this beautiful project as an actual game.

I love the visuals. I love the character design. I love the music. But, so far, it lacks gameplay. I can only hope that you guys turn this sweet bonbon into a beautiful candy shop.
author=Dragol
p.s. Can I please kick Emmych in her cunt? :3


Why do you feel the need to say this? Is it because she criticized this game for reasons you don't agree with? It'd be cool not to express this through a desire for gendered violence.

I've also played the demo but have been refraining from commenting. Not my kind of game, and that's fine. However I will say the voice acting and character presentation made me uncomfortable as well. The tone I'm getting from the devs seems to be they don't want to hear it, and at least atm I don't have the patience to write up a 100000-page dissertation on "why this is uncomfortably close to lolicon" or "why do we need yet another rm horror game where young girls are put into danger". Devs will keep on trucking however they choose to do so, honestly, and they're going to have more than enough fans reassuring them nothing is wrong and their vision is beyond critique.
author=PentagonBuddy
author=Dragol
p.s. Can I please kick Emmych in her cunt? :3
Why do you feel the need to say this? Is it because she criticized this game for reasons you don't agree with? It'd be cool not to express this through a desire for gendered violence.
Well why? I asked nicely, with please : P
Why I shouldn't? The whole "critique" is huge ego hate with focused on "I didn't". Like RM games suppose to impress other people and pleasures them. These games are made, mostly, for ourselves. And so all that "I don't like you stuff that's why you should feel all my hate, now try harder, monkey, to impress me and do what I said" greatly annoys me.
And I said "me", because that's only mine lack and I'm the same who can easily judge and blamecriticize people for their creations.

That was a nice experience of moe-loli horror walking-acting, unlike mostly all RM games in such genre tries to imitate trash like all clones of YN and Ib, or use RTP which not good too.

p.s What is this kind of words? "not cool"? Gendered violence? Are you what, 15? Please don't use that Tumblr-bullshit here.
I'm sorry that you don't understand the purpose of critique and mindlessly lump all negative opinions, no matter how well-spoken or well-justified, into 'hate'.

and I'm sorry that you think being a shithead in a cutesy way somehow excuses you from the consequences.

wishing violence on somebody for stating dissatisfaction with a game is childish and awful, and damages not only yourself but the person whose game you're 'defending'. do you really want people to associate this aggressive puppy-guarding of yours with this project?

also, 'gendered violence' is a valid and widely discussed sociological concept. it didn't originate on Tumblr, and Tumblr is far from the only place it's discussed. if you really lump basic decency in with strawman social justice, you gotta read a book or something.

and hey, PM.

you remember when we said this game had certain elements in it that, intentional or not, would attract gross, venomous people?

author=Dragol
moe-loli

do you believe it now, comrade?
Dragol, I think that was a bit uncalled for to call emmych the “C” word just because she was speaking on behalf of her own opinion and personal experience about the game, even if you just meant to use the word in a joking matter and you didn’t mean any harm by it (which I’m pretty sure that was your intent, as I don’t think you’re the type of person to say mean things like that). Everybody has the right to their own opinion and although you may not agree with some of the things that they say, that’s no way to start calling other users out by using inappropriate language like that.
So I just finished the game and I have to say that while it is very pretty there are a few minor issues with it.

Firstly, there's a story lacking, which you already know. However, what you don't seem to realise is that graphics can't be all you offer in a game. Just because something looks pretty doesn't mean it'll hold people's attention or get them to want to play. You should add a little more to the character and story in there - something to draw in the player so they're itching for the next release.

Your grammar in parts is pretty bad. There's too many ellipses and quite a few punctuation issues. There isn't much writing in the game so far so it's hard to get a handle on the character. Nevermind that the intermission parts were vague and not at all understandable except the one diary entry in the library.

Speaking of which, there's a small bug in there where if you talk to the windows you get the text telling you that the shelves are too high to reach, and none for the actual areas where the shelves are. You might want to check that.

I didn't think it came off rapey, but it does have the potential to do so very easily. The portraits are what leans it towards that side, I do believe. The 'innocent, splay-armed, doe-eye' comes off as very lolita and if you don't want it associated with that kind of feel it might be a good idea to change them a little. Less arms up protectively might help a bit. She looks likes she's fending off a predator. Things like the title screen doesn't help with that at all - the whole laying down in a pseudo-sexual, innocently-alluring way really gives off the wrong vibes.

The puzzles are very simplistic. I was ready to do something - anything - to get the orbs but the hardest one was the yellow and that wasn't hard to figure out at all. So, yeah... that's something you need to work on.

There's no real atmosphere of danger through the game. Even when you find the bloody finger it's all rather calm and non-shocking. If this is to be a horror it needs to actually have a bit of, oh, horror. Or suspense. Or shock. Anything. As it stands it's basically 'walk here, go there, grab that, up here, end' which is kinda boring.

And sad, because the graphical atmosphere is very nicely done. There were a few minor issues here and there - the mirror has some kind of almost-transparent film at the bottom of it that overlays the character and it's kinda noticable. Also a few spots here and there on overlays that appear and disappear and just seem odd/are easy to notice. Overall, though, the graphics are quite well done.

Sound is nice. I like the little touches. Just wondering, are the voice sounds those from Mad Father? If so, it might be an idea to get your own because they're quite recognisable. I've only ever watched an LP of it and I'm not a fan but I noticed, so...

For the most part it's a bit bland in the interest department, with very little to show for it being a horror. That said, it is just a demo and the graphical components are pulled off very nicely, so there's that. I am looking forward to seeing more of the game because, frankly, it could go in any direction at the moment and I'd like to see if you follow closely in Mad Fathers' footsteps or if it branches out into it's own game. I'd rather the latter - it's not a bad thing to draw inspiration from something but don't try to stick too close to that inspiration.

Anyway, good luck.


@All: No more arguing. Warnings have been issued; end of story.

@Dragol: Go play The Longing Ribbon and then tell me the RTP is not goo. >:|
author=Liberty
@Dragol: Go play The Longing Ribbon and then tell me the RTP is not goo. >:|

Ffffffffff, you got me here >.<
'Course I do~ As with any graphics, it's how they're used that matters, not what they are (unless they're really, really, really messed up...*cough*blockland*cough*)


author=PentagonBuddy
"why do we need yet another rm horror game where young girls are put into danger". Devs will keep on trucking however they choose to do so, honestly, and they're going to have more than enough fans reassuring them nothing is wrong and their vision is beyond critique.

Bit of an aside, but I hope this doesn't mean Emi has to give up her exorcist work - of course, she's not exactly 'endangered young girl in need of rescue' but more 'I make friends with ghosts and help them go on to the afterlife... oh and went to hell that one time and kicked ass' so I don't think you're referring to her. Maybe. >.<;

But yeah, the typical "Little Girl Lost" is used a lot in horror games. I guess because it's supposed to pull you into feeling protective over the character which is more likely to happen with a little girl (oh she's so weak and can't do anything) other than a boy (he played with guns so he knows how to use one durrr). Frankly, I think they're both pretty much helpless... unless the name's Clementine in which case, kick-ass girl~
yeah, as far as portrayal in games goes, it's kind of telling that people will mostly pass up the prospect of a female protagonist unless it's for a horror game. granted, things are a little more even here in the independent scene, since we don't have people interfering to talk about demographics and sales, but the association between girls and vulnerability is still something I'm not comfortable with. I'd much rather see a Ghibli approach to a young female protagonist -- someone who might initially seem outmatched, but who perseveres through their personal strength.

but that's kind of getting off-topic. I guess I'm watching this with the hope that the game will respect the protag's agency rather than just use her as a terrified-noise machine.
Hello there, just finished playing the demo.
It was pretty good...
Hopefully the completed version would be more interesting