App Army Assemble: A Fragile Mind - "Will this puzzler leave you scratching your head?"

• This week, we put our App Army's puzzling prowess through its paces in A Fragile Mind
• The game received a mixed reception from our community
• Some praised the enjoyably difficult puzzles and humour while others felt the presentation let it down

A Fragile Mind is a recently released puzzle adventure from developer Glitch Games. It draws upon the classic escape room approach but throws in a bit of humour to give everything some brevity. We handed the game over to our App Army readers to see what they thought of it.

Here's what they said:

Swapnil Jadhav

Honestly, after looking icon of the game, I thought it must be a very boring game since the logo looked quite old. However, after playing it, I found the gameplay very unique and it made for a different kind of puzzle adventure.

The puzzles are hard but very engaging. One of the best puzzle games. I don't want to reveal a lot but my recommendation would be to play this game on iPad or any other tablet.

Max Williams

This is a point-and-click puzzle-solving adventure, of the 'static pre-rendered graphics' type. I have no idea whatsoever what the story is if there even is one. Each chapter consists of a floor of a building, and you need to solve a series of increasingly complicated puzzles to reach the next one. Perhaps unusually for this sort of game, you can get to the next floor without solving all of the puzzles on the current one, and in fact, some puzzles can't be solved until you go to the next floor, get some items, and bring them back.

There's some nice 4th-wall-breaking in this game: inspecting an item tells you its graphic "isn't detailed enough to be important" for example. I was very grateful for the hints, although they could maybe have been throttled a bit: you can churn through them as rapidly as you want, and it automatically removes hints for problems you've solved, so they're always telling you the next thing to do. I made it through to the third floor and then had to start hitting the hints quite a lot.

Generally, the puzzles are of the "seems fairly obvious once you know" variety - I didn't see any which seemed too obscure or random. This game's company has obviously been around the block several times with this style of game and really knows what they're doing at this point. I did find the navigation quite confusing - jumping between rooms and corridors, especially when the rooms led back into the corridor through a different room, it became hard to know where I was. But that's a minor niggle really.

Overall I'd say that this isn't going to change the minds of people who don't like this genre, but it's a very good example of the genre. I'm definitely going to keep playing.

Robert Maines

A Fragile Mind is a first-person puzzle adventure where you wake up inside a garden within a building with no idea where and who you are. As you explore the building you must take photos, and discover objects and clues that help you solve puzzles to progress.

Although nothing fantastic in the graphics and sounds department they do the job. I found the puzzles quite hard and had to consult a walkthrough from time to time. It’s not a long game and once completed there is little incentive to play it again. If you like puzzle adventures then it’s well worth a play.

Torbjörn Kämblad

Escape-the-room kind of puzzlers have been some of my best experiences playing on the small screen. Find objects, solve ingenious puzzles and move from room to room. The games of the genre have been varying in quality, and sadly I found A Fragile Mind! to be at the lower end of the spectrum.

The presentation feels a bit muddy making it hard to make out the different pieces of puzzles and to some extent the puzzles themselves. Combined with some UI design choices such as placing the menu button in the top left corner of the screen making it extremely easy to tap by mistake makes the gaming experience a bit tedious.

The pacing is also a bit off in my opinion, as I got access to too many puzzles from the start making it hard to get one’s bearings. I felt lost and had to resort to using the handy hint system from the get-go just to get some sense of where to go.

Mark Abukoff

I don’t usually enjoy these puzzle games because they often seem quite difficult and the payoff never seems quite worth the work. But I really am quite pleased with this one. Plenty of audio and visual options. I like the aesthetic and the atmosphere. The clues and puzzles were intriguing and I like the hint system. Honestly I find myself using hint systems in puzzle games often and this is a good one. It’ll tell you what you really need to do and if you’re still stumped, offer to show you the solution. Overall a really good (if fairly short) experience for the small price. Recommended!

Diane Close

Imagine you wake up in your car, disoriented, late at night, in front of an abandoned circus. There’s a note pinned to the passenger seat: “It’s in the trunk!” You grab the pin, exit the car, and pop open the trunk. There’s a feather and a razor blade. You take both. You approach the circus entrance where suddenly you’re confronted by a giant elephant! Watching the giant beast, it slowly dawns on you that elephants have trunks too.

This is what it’s like (spoiler-free!) to play “A Fragile Mind”. I’ve played tons like this, on iOS and Android, but Glitch Games has upped the ante here by piling puzzles upon puzzles like a giant Jenga game. Every room you visit has multiple clues for multiple puzzles and you need to tease through them all separately and simultaneously to advance the story. Take in-game photos and physical notes often!

Plays flawlessly on Android (Google Pixel phones). Has a ton of visual and sound options, which I really appreciate. Good accessibility options too! The gameplay is about an hour for expert puzzle solvers, and there’s a good amount of in-game humour/puns along the way too. I enjoyed it!

What is the App Army?

The App Army is Pocket Gamer's lovely community of mobile game experts. As often as possible, we ask them for their thoughts on the latest games and share them with you.

To join, simply head over to either our Discord Channel or Facebook Group and request access by answering the three questions. We'll then get you in right away.