Are y’all familiar with microgames? I ask because I’ll sometimes field my article ideas among my friends during conversations over drinks. None of them knew exactly what I was talking about when I brought up MINDWAVE, which is an incredibly promising indie game that I recently played the demo for.
That said, microgames are kind of like minigames, but with even less complexity. They’re very simple games with a singular goal that only takes a few seconds to complete. For example, the game might ask you to pop it, and present players with bubble wrap on their screen. They’ll then need to click on the remaining bubbles to pop them, and win the game.
From my own experience, microgames were something I first experienced on the website Newgrounds, which, for those of you who’re younger, is an art website that started in the 90s for sharing drawings, videos, and games. There were a ton of aspiring artists on the website, especially during the early 2000s, so you could find a deluge of experimental games sprinkled across Newgrounds.
Either way, MINDWAVE is a microgame collection, so it plays host to just as many of these smaller concept games. There’s a catch though: you’ll be completing microgames back-to-back while the speed, and complexity of the challenges increases. MINDWAVE has exactly the kind of high-intensity, dopamine-fuelled gameplay that makes Nintendo’s WarioWare games so endlessly replayable, but it’s great to see a fresh set of creatives taking a crack at the formula.
Though, it wasn’t just the gameplay that sold me on MINDWAVE – it was also the vibe. MINDWAVE is the most 2000s-ass feeling video game I’ve ever played, and I mean that as the highest of compliments.
Just take a look at it:
Tell me that doesn’t give off the same energy as something like Disgaea, or The World Ends With You. Heck, it even feels like there’s some 90s, and early 2000s era Cartoon Network influence in there too.
It’s not just the vibes that I enjoyed, I also really liked the sense of style in MINDWAVE. Everything has this sort of messy look to it. Despite this, all of the lines flow seamlessly together, and create these really eye-catching images that demand the viewer’s attention.
Plus, the character designs are fantastic. I love how angular everyone is, and how the artist(s) have used that to draw the viewer’s attention to all these little bespoke details that tell you so much about each character before they’ve said a single line of dialogue. Those hard edges also help to reinforce the specific aesthetic that MINDWAVE is so clearly harkening back to.
Nevermind, the music. Holy JESUS is the music in MINDWAVE good. Every single track in this game is a banger, which is good because you’ll be hearing them a lot given the somewhat repetitive nature of MINDWAVE’s core gameplay loop. However, you’d be hard pressed to call the music repetitive. It has the same almost hypnotic quality that the music in games like Balatro have where it can loop endlessly without ever becoming any less enjoyable to listen to.
It might feel weird to spend so much of this preview fixated entirely on MINDWAVE’s aesthetic, but I think that’s a big part of its identity. The game stands out so much thanks to its artistic direction, which adds a layer of texture to the experience of playing through its collection of fun microgames.
The demo for MINDWAVE also shows off a few furls of a story, but there wasn’t enough there for me to comment one way, or the other on it. I will say that I was intrigued, which is always a good sign. Though, it’d be dishonest to say I’m not here primarily for the microgames, and leaderboards.
While I don’t think it’ll be for everyone, MINDWAVE seems like it’ll become another of those indie darlings with a rabid fanbase. For my money, it’s definitely one to keep an eye on. The folks at Holohammer have something very special on their hands, and I look forward to playing the full version once they’ve finished cooking it up.
If you’d like to try MINDWAVE for yourself, you can grab the demo on Steam. Don’t forget to wishlist it if you end up having as much fun as I did since wishlisting a game helps with visibility on Steam.
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Frostilyte Writes 