Pocket Mirror Classic (2016)

This game have a place in my heart, that's game was wonderful and so interesting.

I was cleaning my e-mailbox when I found a three years old e-mail which I sent to AstralShift and never got any reply so I might as well post here:

Greetings!

First, I want to say that I enjoyed playing Pocket Mirror to the point that I played it twice in a row, when the game restarted right after the ending, I didn't mind playing it again because I think you did a really great work!

That being said, I couldn't help but notice some laziness which could easily be fixed.

I'm talking about the inconsistencies in Goldia and Fleta's pictures.

Indeed, there are several situations where Goldia hands her pocket mirror to someone or put it on the floor but you didn't bother to remove it from her hand in her pictures and there are several situations where Fleta is not carrying Egliette but you didn't bother to remove her from her arms in her pictures.

I think this is a shame because it breaks immersion in the story because of inconsistencies, we know that Goldia is not holding her pocket mirror right now but we still see it in her hand, we know that Fleta is not carrying Egliette right now but we still see her in her arms, that doesn't work and that could easily be fixed.

Speaking about the pictures, I am wondering if you are maybe color-blind because you seem to confuse colors.

For example, it is said that Fleta's dress is pink while it is red, it is said that Goldia's eyes are pink while they are red...

I really need some explanations about some riddles:

"It's yellow, blue, red and green! No one can reach it, not even the queen!"

I played the game twice and I still have no idea what this riddle is about, I had to read a walkthrough to understand but I only got the answer which is 7, I couldn't find any explanation to this and I don't want to just give the answer to continue without understanding so I completed the game twice in a row but I still would appreciate some explanation please.

Another riddle that I didn't understand is Mrs. Elizabeth baked 5 dishes then a robber stole 2 and a dog stole a third one so there are only 2 left so how come that 5 were saved? I don't get it and would like to.

Also, how is the letter F like a cow's tail?

I searched pictures of cow's tail in order to check how it looks and I couldn't find any resemblance with the letter F so I would appreciate some explanation please.

That was for the 3 riddles that I didn't understand in the game.

Now, there is a mistake in your script.

In Fleta's dollhouse, when you reach the 4th floor, if you go right to the playgroung before left to the starry sky room, you never see the cutscene when Fleta says to Goldia that she wants her to stay and live with her forever so when she finds her in Mother's room while playing hide'n seek and tells her "I told you I want you to stay here with me forever", that comes from nowhere and doesn't make sense.

In order to fix this issue, you need to make sure that players watch the cutscene in the starry sky room before getting to the playground.

Maybe you could script an event to make Fleta bring Goldia to the left room as soon as they reach the 4th floor?

Is there a logic to which letter is attributed to each character?

Why Goldia is G, Egliette is I, Fleta is A, Harpae is O, Lisette is L and Enjel is D?

Is there any logic in this attribution or was it random?

I thought about it, Goldia is the original personality, the first, which is why she is the first letter, G, then Fleta should be the second letter, O, because she was Goldia's first imaginary friend, born from Goldia's loneliness because there was no child to play with her, her brother didn't want to be bothered while he was writing and the adults didn't want to be bothered while they were having parties, so Goldia's mind created Fleta to live a carefree life, then I think Enjel should be the third letter, L, but I will explain why later, Goldia's father brang a doll named Egliette from one of his journeys and this doll became Fleta's new own imaginary friend, which makes Egliette the fourth personality to be born inside Goldia's mind, so she should be the fourth letter, D, then Fleta created Lisette to be her scapegoat, someone to blame for all of her mischief and take all punishment in her stead so she could pretend to be nothing but a pure little girl, like shown in her theater play, which makes Lisette the fifth personality to be born inside Goldia's mind, so she should be the fifth letter, I, then at last, when Goldia was about to break down because her father expected evermore from her, she created Harpae, her knight in shining armor, her guardian angel, to save her from all the pressure put on her by her father, to allow her to rest while Harpae became the perfect daughter that Goldia's father wanted, she is the last personality to be born inside Goldia's mind, so she should be the last letter, A.

An interesting fact to notice is that Goldia actually created 2 imaginary friends for herself, Fleta and Harpae, while 2 others, Egliette and Lisette, were actually created by Fleta, and the third missing personality replaced by Enjel was born from Goldia but not as an imaginary friend like Fleta and Harpae but I will talk about my theory of her in due time.

Also, I feel that each character's good ending requirements are wrong:

Fleta's good ending requires to beat her at all games.

I understand the point to not let her win on purpose in order to not indulge in her whims.

However, the first game that we play with her is a game of cards flipping but we have to already know the disposition of the cards in order to win, we can't win on the first try because it relies on sheer luck, which means we basically have to lose to learn the disposition of the cards then reset the game to load our save and play again to beat her once we know how the cards are disposed, which is basically cheating, what she accuses of doing and that we actually have to do to be granted her good ending.

When I first played the game, I lost at the flipping card game, and I was willing to accept my loss fair and square because I couldn't have done better, I couldn't have known how the cards were disposed since their faces were hidden.

But I dislike when results depend on sheer luck and not skill, this feels unfair, and the way Fleta was treating Goldia, I just couldn't take it, I wanted to teach her humility, so I chose to not accept my loss and reload the game to try again.

And I later learned that I HAD to do it to grant Fleta a good ending, meaning that I HAD to cheat to win, which I think is unfair.

If the player has to choose between losing to Fleta on purpose to please her or winning to teach her humility then this choice should occur only in games where the player can actually choose to lose or win, meaning no games which rely on luck.

The butterflies catching game is perfect to test how the player chooses to deal with Fleta because it is easy to win but also easy to lose if we walk instead of running to lose on purpose so it involves a real choice from the player, which makes me think that it should be the only game to be taken into account for Fleta's ending, not counting the musical chairs because losing to this game implies a game over.

Actually, I always thought that we don't play enough games with Fleta, there should be more, but the important point is that a game of luck like the flipping cards game should not influence the ending.

The first time that I played Pocket Mirror, I always chose to help Harpae because I wanted to teach her that, even though her role is to help me, that doesn't mean that I can't return the favor and let her take all the pressure on her.

Then I got her bad ending, which I hated, so I read the walkthrough to understand what it was that I did wrong, and I was pretty upset to learn that I had to NOT help her in order to grant her a good ending, fortunately I had a save which allowed me to do Harpae area again before moving on to the next area.

I think this is really wrong because in her bad ending, she shatters because of the overwhelming pressure that she put on herself, she breaks down and considers herself a failure then she shatters in sadness.

And this happened because I HELPED her instead of letting her burden herself with all responsibilities.

While in her good ending, she says that all that she did was to put her frustrations on me and she says that when she put all the pressure on herself because I never helped her.

I think this really should be the contrary.

The conditions for her BAD ending should be to NOT help her which leads her to break down because of the overwhelming pressure that she put on herself that Goldia did NOT help alleviate and the conditions for her GOOD ending should be to HELP her to alleviate the pressure she put on herself and teach her that Goldia cares for her, which should make her happy, moreover THEN it would make sense that she says "I put my frustrations on you" because she allowed Goldia to help her, to share her burden.

MOREOVER, you bothered to create a mini-game of moving obstacles of the way in a maze of junk and you PROHIBIT players to enjoy this mini-game because you require them to NOT help Harpae and let her solve the maze herself while the player does nothing in order to grant her good ending.

Yeah, you create a fun mini-game and you PROHIBIT players to play it in order to grant a good ending, does that make sense?!?

For all these reasons, I plead that you should inverse the helping requirements for Harpae, helping her should result in her GOOD ending and NOT helping her should result in her BAD ending.

The first time that I played Pocket Mirror, I got Lisette's bad ending, that I also hated, because I chose to be honest with her.

Yeah, when she asked me how I knew her name, I chose to be honest with her and tell her the truth, that Harpae told me her name.

One again, reading the walkthrough pissed me off to learn that in order to grant Lisette good ending, I had to be an hypocrite and fool her with a lie!

Moreover, how could Goldia know her name when she wasn't even aware of her existence, it was Fleta who created Lisette to be her scapegoat, we see it in Fleta's theatre play when she reads the letter in her mother's room and she blames it on Lisette and we see it again when Goldia accepts to be stabbed by Lisette in the Midnight Circus and then Lisette sees a short flashback where we see Fleta pointing her finger on her and scorning her, which causes Lisette to step back with shock.

In Lisette theatre play, we see Goldia torturing Lisette but it was what Lisette saw and since Fleta was one of Goldia's personalities, she looked like Goldia from the outside so the "Goldia" that Lisette remembers torturing her was actually Fleta controlling Goldia's body.

Goldia wasn't even aware that Lisette existed before exploring her inner world and meeting her other personalities in the game so how could she have remembered something that she never knew?

This is why telling Lisette that we remembered her name by ourselves is an hypocrite lie and this is what is required to grant her good ending, to make her happy by hypocritically lying to her.

I think this is wrong.

Hypocrisy should not be rewarded, honesty should be rewarded.

So I believe being hypocrite and lying to Lisette should be a requirement for her BAD ending and being honest with her and telling her the truth should be a requirement for her GOOD ending.

But something is missing when we tell her that Harpae told us her name...

Indeed, Lisette should ask: "Oh? So Harpae talked to you about me, did she? And what did she tell you, hmm?"

Then there should be a choice between "She told me you are a threat." or "She told me you need my help.".

Choosing "you are a threat" is a requirement for Lisette bad ending while choosing "you need my help" is a requirement for her good ending.

Now don't you think this would work better? ;-)

But the issue which bothered me the most to the point of deleting the game from my computer and that I did not mention in my e-mail because I was waiting for a reply before delving deeper into my feedback is that the normal conclusion is actually much better than the "good ending" because the mental health conclusion actually makes much more sense than the "deal with a demon" nonsensical plot and the "normal ending" and "good ending" should be swapped because the mental health recovery conclusion should be the reward for doing everything right instead of being a punishment for failing to grab the pocket mirror before Enjel as the "Goodie Two Shoes" conclusion doesn't feel rewarding at all since it makes no sense because the whole "deal with a demon" plot is nonsensical compared to the mental health issue plot which is more credible.

I am having trouble installing this game :( it mentioned there not being a manager to install it or something

I just encountered a bug in the secret manor one of the maps is broken, I just tried going into the door at the top of the stairs. After leaving the room upon hearing the broken glass and it gave me a scripting error which crashed the game. So can someone fix this please? Thanks, seems to have fixed itself it only happened once.

Boy am I glad that the original version of the game is still on here, steam had it for the longest time but for some reason it was taken down so now only the remastered edition remains.  I don't have 20$ though, so I needed to get the original version of the game if I still wanted to play it.