eXtasy Games presents: Shattered Minds (Patreon)

Today is the day, after "Fates: Determination" I unveil my next game "Shattered Minds"!

Shattered Minds will be fundamentally different from Fates.

While Fates was a pure visual novel (with minimal gameplay elements), Shattered Minds will offer a more open world/sandbox experience, but of course again paired with a thrilling, mysterious yet humorous plot.

The gameplay

In Shattered Minds you play a young male college student whose name you can choose yourself.

The game is played entirely from the first-person perspective.

You can freely wander around the world, interact with characters and objects, earn money, buy things, play mini-games and complete quests.

For now there are two places available in which the game is mainly set and which you can explore. One is the home of the MC (main character) and the other one is his college.

It is possible to expand the game with countless locations in the future and so eventually even create a whole city where you can move around freely, have conversations with others, discover secrets and play quests!
But that's a long way off.

Shattered Minds will feature a simulated daily schedule as well as simulated days of the week.

Depending on the time of day (morning, noon, evening) or even the day of the week, the characters will have different activities and can be found in different places.

Means nothing else than in the morning other events are possible than in the afternoon and so on.

Your most important assistant, the smartphone

The smartphone is your most important companion in Shattered Minds.

With it you can track the status of all active quests and always know at a glance what you have to do next.

It also offers an inventory, an app with data of all characters you have met in the game (data like age, height...), an app for online shopping and an app that shows you where the characters near you are located at the moment. This saves you time looking for them.

A messenger is also included, as well as other apps that are unlocked during the course of the plot.

The plot

Let's get to perhaps the most important part, the plot of Shattered Minds.

As mentioned at the beginning, you play a young guy who goes to college. You live together with an older woman and a younger woman. You can also choose the names for the two.

Perhaps surprisingly, but Shattered Minds is set in the same world as Fates.
In a world where people with superpowers exist... and our MC is one of them.
He has perhaps the most awesome and dangerous power of them all... Mind Control!

I think at the latest now everyone can make sense of what this game will be about!

The plot picks up at the end of Fates. However, it is not necessary to have played Fates to enjoy Shattered Minds.

You will use your power to influence others to do things... things they would never do otherwise, all for your benefit.
I'm being intentionally vague here so I don't give too much away.

But as we also know from Fates, an ability never comes without its dark side...

You'll find out about that soon enough in the game.

As you progress through the game, you will improve your ability, level it up and distribute skill points to make your power stronger and stronger.

The goal of the game should be to bring as many people as possible under your control using your mind control power, forming the world to your will and thus build a harem… for you to enjoy.

This is done through quests.

Each character will have its own storyline which will be told through these quests. During these quests you will have to do tasks for the characters, get things, have (sexy) adventures with them, help them out or just get to know them better.

The Graphics

Let's move on to the graphic side of Shattered Minds.

Shattered Minds will consist of a mixture of animations and classic still images.

But these still images aren't as still as they might seem at first glance:

(Please excuse the bad quality of the gif, with higher resolution the effect is better shown: Link to full res video preview) 

I've added a so-called parallax effect. When you move your mouse, the background and the figure in the foreground move with it. This should result in a kind of 3D effect.

Parried with the blinking, the characters in Shattered Minds look more alive than ever before!

But don't worry, if you don't like the parallax effect, it can be turned off entirely in the options menu.

I think that's it for now. I hope I could give you a rough idea of what to expect next year.

The first version, V0.01, of Shattered Minds will be released in early 2023.

I'll be showing you more of the game and its main characters in the coming weeks!