Draft:Mind Beneath Us

Mind Beneath Us. is an emotionally delicate science fiction narrative game, developed and published by BearBone studio. In terms of gameplay, players can influence the direction of the story based on their dialogue choices. The game is released on July 31, 2024, for Microsoft Windows.

Premise

In a cruel world where humans are used as computing devices to extract computing power, experience everything from the perspective of ordinary people. You can listen to the troubles of your companions, help them, pursue the conspiracy of the incident, and accompany the protagonist to make the final decision.

Plot

In a future society, where artificial intelligence is fully popularized and replaces many jobs, a brand-new industry is born. Through the computing network created by connecting many human brains, the expensive hardware required by countless traditional artificial intelligence has been easily replaced. Therefore, countless disadvantaged groups who have lost their jobs due to artificial intelligence have all devoted themselves to such work. Taking this sick society as the stage, a conspiracy gradually emerged.

The main character is just consciousnese and called "M.B.U". In the game, "M.B.U" controls a body called Shijie Dai, but Shijie Dai also has his own consciousness. "M.B.U" can see his thoughts, but Shijie Dai can't control his own body. Shijie Dai has a girlfriend named Fang Cheng. Fang Cheng works for Wanxiang Company, and Shijie Dai will be a new employee in that company. As a new worker, Shijie Dai will choose to work on Filter Group or Operation Group. When he joined the Wanxiang Company, Manager Ye will him to experience the work of the Filter Group first. The task of the Filter Group is to let Shijie Dai interview people who apply for manual labor in the company. He will judge whether the person is qualified to become an employee of the company by asking key questions. After he completes the interview, he needs to report his results to Manager Ye, and Manager Ye will also evaluate him based on his results. After the evaluation, Shijie Dai and the leader of the Filter Group will meet the people he interviewed again to inform them whether they can work in Wanxiang Company. In this task, Manager Ye gave Shijie Dai a challenge. Manager Ye wanted him to access a mother with poor health. If he refuses her, Shijie Dai will not be able to become an employee of Wanxiang Company. After passing the Filter Group, Shijie Dai will be assigned to the Operation Group to experience their work. The main work of the Operation Group is done by employees who are proficient in computers. Although Shijie Dai is not good at computer knowledge, his job is to determine the health qualifications of new employees. In this work, he saw the real dark side of the company, and he needed to judge whether he was suitable for such a job by deciding the life and death of others.

After the two experiences, he needs to make his own choice— the Filter Group or the Operation Group, and his choice will also affect the development of the subsequent plot. On the other hand, Fang Cheng discovered that the dark side of the company involved her leader. She chose to negotiate to solve the problem but was murdered, and her life was in danger. Upon learning the news, Shijie Dai chooses to visit Fang Cheng in the hospital and meets two members from a mysterious organization, one is named 23, and the other is named Tuning Si. Shijie Dai learned from the conversation that their goal was to expose the dark side of Wanxiang Company. Manager Ye and one of the Filter Group— Longsheng Zhang, are their undercover agents. Tuning Si saw Shijie Dai's ability and hoped that he could help them complete the plan. After Fang Cheng recovered and knew the whole story, she also chose to join the plan because of Shijie Dai. At the end of the story, they discovered that Wanxiang Company is the key to maintaining people's lives, and the mysterious organization wants to protect Wanxiang Company. The ending provides Shijie Dai with four options, and the ending of the game will be different depending on the choice.

Gameplay

Mind Beneath Us is a choice-oriented visual novel game. The game not only contains different dialogue options and text content, but also involves some action scenes, and players only need to complete the actions through simple button presses and time reactions.

Development

On June 15, 2021, Bearbone Studio released the trailer on YouTube

The game demo was released by BearBone Studio on December 30, 2021, for players to try out.

The inspiration for this game is BearBone Studio's disappointment after observing society. They have a lot of thoughts and feelings they want to express, and they think making a game feels like the right medium to achieve this goal.

Reception

Mind Beneath Us received "generally favoratble" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.