Reflection of Mine by Ratalaika Games and Redblack Spade is a puzzler game with a twisted story that’s surprisingly interesting to follow. Come find out more in our Reflection of Mine review!

 

The game starts with a girl that walks into an office for an appointment with a psychologist. Lilly sometimes loses her memory but has bigger issues than that. You learn from the psychologist that she burned down a church, went missing for two weeks, burned down a hotel, witnessed a cruel murder, and escaped from a mental asylum. Lilly has multiple personality syndrome, and by reading her diaries, written by those personalities, you will uncover what happened and what goes down in her head.

 

Before starting the game, you have the choice of three difficulties, although the third one is only available after beating the game. The easiest one, Phobia, has hints and checkpoints for you to use, your number of steps don’t count, and you can destroy obstacles, but you can’t complete the game to 100%. The middle difficulty, Hysteria, is mostly the same, except that you can’t destroy obstacles and can thus fully complete the game.

Once you start a level, you are presented with two sides, representing two of Lilly’s personalities. Your goal is to bring them both in front of the mirror on their respective side. While that might sound like a simple premise, the thing is that your moves with the left joystick makes them both move at once. If this sounds simple, consider that it’s not too long before levels are not set up exactly the same, so you have to figure out where you can hit a wall with one of the two so that the other can continue to move forward in order to have them both reach the end. As you progress through the levels and worlds, different aspects will come into play to spice up the difficulty, such as spikes coming out of the floor at set intervals, enemies that patrol specific areas, or pillars that you can restore or destroy depending on what item you pick up.

 

The game features some nice visuals with colorful graphics that set a clear distinction between the personalities on their respective sides of each stage. There’s also a lot of hard work that’s been put into how the text is displayed depending on which personality’s point of view you’re seeing, adding a nice and creepy touch to the game.

While things started out pretty smoothly, it didn’t take long before I started scratching my head to solve the puzzles. Once spikes and all those traps start appearing, you really have to plan things carefully while watching both sides because a single mistake resets you back at the beginning of the level, or at a checkpoint if you were lucky enough to have one. Considering the ever-increasing difficulty of the game, my biggest complaint is probably about the fact that checkpoints are close to non-existent. There are some levels that require complex moves and way over 50 steps without a single checkpoint, so if you screw up, you’re back to square one – unless you manage to activate the one or two checkpoints in some stages.

 

As for the trophies, the Platinum can be an easy one to obtain if you follow a guide – otherwise, you’re in for a challenging time. You won’t have to finish the game, as all trophies are obtained by completing the main levels of the first three worlds while also completing the key levels to unlock the secret – and more challenging – levels. But following a guide, it becomes relatively easy and can be completed in one sitting.

Reflection of Mine is an interesting puzzler that requires a lot of thinking if you plan on doing things without a guide, but to a point where it might actually be too difficult to truly enjoy the game, majorly because of the lack of more frequent checkpoints.

 

Disclaimer
This Reflection of Mine review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Ratalaika Games.