"Hold your memories close to your heart."
Pocket Mirror
is a free Explorer Horror game made by the circle AstralShift using RPG Maker VX Ace. The tale begins when a young amnesiac girl wakes up from slumber and begins exploring her surroundings and figuring out where she is and what her name is. Her only keepsake that clues in on her identity is a pocket mirror, with only the letter G visible on the back. In G's desire to discover who she is, where she is, and what is going on, she finds her way into a variety of strange worlds ruled by equally strange girls who do not want to let her leave. To learn the truth of herself, G will have to find the Regalia, golden items held by the girls which each have a letter of her name and can unlock her memories.
The game was released July 22, 2016. A remastered version of the original game, Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum, was released on Steam on May 19, 2023, in the lead up to Little Goody Two Shoes's release, adding features like a chapter selection mode and a new ending.
A prequel game focusing on the childhood of Elise (G's mother), Little Goody Two Shoes, was announced in December 2016. It was published on Oct 31, 2023, under the auspices of Square Enix's "Square Enix Collective" branch for independent creators.
Pocket Mirror contains examples of:
- Alice Allusion:
- Near the beginning of the game, G picks up a small bottle that shrinks her, and later a cake makes her grow larger.
- The tea party scene in which Queen Egilette is introduced is reminiscent of Alice meeting the Mad Hatter.
- Two NPCs are reminiscent of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: Pumpkin Charms are hidden all across the game, and can even be found on innocuous objects like vases and windows. Sometimes you need to examine something twice to get the Charms.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The remaster introduces a few small things to make gameplay smoother.
- Usable items in this game are assigned to one of two "use" slots so that you don't have to delve into the inventory each time. It's convenient for unlocking doors with keys or placing down puzzle elements.
- The musical chairs game with Fleta makes apparent the window to press Z to make it easier to win.
- The New Game Plus mode unlocked after getting any non-Bad Ending first drops you in a hall where you can access any of the chapters, allowing players to start from any chapter they want if they missed any Pumpkin Charms, and also allows you to toggle the three main Regalia as acquired or not, allowing you to get most of the endings by choosing various combinations and then heading to the short final chapter instead of having to play the entire game multiple times. However, getting the Secret Ending does require you to start from at least Fleta’s chapter, and if you want all Pumpkin Charms you will have to play from the beginning anyway to get the NG+-exclusive ones.
- Arc Words: "Hold your memories close to your heart." It is often repeated in the game and also prompts the players to save as much as they can.
- Art Evolution: The remaster features new, more elaborate art for everyone. If you prefer the original sprites, the options menu lets you enable "Legacy Art".
- Artistic License: The story happens during mid-19th century, and there are wax records in Harpae's area. Wax records weren't invented until 1890. This gets even more anachronistic when considering Little Goody Two Shoes, which feels like it takes place in pre-industrial Bavaria-slash-Austria.
- Big Bad: The Strange Boy is the one who trapped the protagonist G in the mysterious world and stole her memories, and he is also responsible for creating the other villains to keep her trapped.
- Bilingual Bonus: There's little bits of German littered everywhere in the game, and may offer insight into certain plot points. Justified, since the story happens in Austria.
- But Thou Must!: Princess Fleta does this in her dollhouse.Fleta: Let me show you [how her magic room works]. What colour do you like best?
G: I really like red!
Fleta: But I don't really like red! Never mind that! Just choose between pink and blue! Which do you like best?
G: I like blue!
Fleta: Hmph! But I like pink better! So we're going with pink!
G: ..... - Color Motif: Each of the girls had one and they correspond with their eyes. The protagonist Goldia's is cherry red, Fleta's is green, Harpae's is blue, Lisette's is purple, and Enjel's is gold.
- Creepy Doll: Lots of them show up as enemies. One of them, Egilette, is a major character.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: When you play Musical Chairs with Fleta, the instructions tell you explicitly to press A, and the protagonist moves automatically around the chairs so you don't have to worry about staying far from a seat. Seems easy...unless you're used to console games. Pressing A is equivalent to pressing a confirm button for seasoned console gamers, but this is an RPG Maker game where Z is the default confirm button. Some players took a little while to catch on that they had to press a different keyboard button. And again in the middle of musical chairs. Every time the music stops the screen goes black and it's easy to associate that with the cue to press A. However, one segment has the music stop but the screen remains, easily confusing the player momentarily enough to lose. GoldenerTraum fixes this with an explicit button prompt that tells you to press Z and when.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: A lot of the bad endings have G like this.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Obtaining the good end for certain characters is not only incredibly difficult, but it really requires you to pay attention to several clues and riddles to get them.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: The entire game is this. Justified as it was set in the 19th century, Austria.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The Dawn ending contains several reveals that completely change the context of the story. Everything was All Just a Dream had by the protagonist Goldia, a mental patient. Egilette, Fleta, Harpae, and Lisette are her Literal Split Personalities. And the story takes place in the 19th century, meaning it was a Period Piece all along.
- Eye Scream: One of the first puzzles has you pluck out a girl's eyeball. Then you're handed another one just because someone could see light in their life again briefly.
- Fingore: The game delivers its first bloody mess being a decapitated finger in a room. We later find out that it's Enjel's finger. Her sprite shows one of her fingers being cut off.
- Foreshadowing:
- After answering the clown riddles, the ringmaster pumpkin warns you to be polite with your opponents. It's a subtle hint to how to affect the ending you get.
- In the dressing room, G says that the maid dress there looks like the ones at home, hinting that she comes from a wealthy family with servants.
- There are a couple hints that Enjel is not telling the truth:
- When first met, Enjel states that the protagonist's name is also Enjel. Harpae later contradicts this when she is about to call out the protagonist's name in the elevator; if one pays close attention, they can see that she gets in a G before being interrupted. The protagonist's name thus starts with G, and as such cannot be Enjel. However, this only counts in the original, as the remaster reveals the first letter of the protagonist’s name to be G from the beginning.
- Later on, when Lisette has captured G and Enjel, the latter gets angry and tells Lisette, among other things, that if it wasn't for Lisette, Enjel would have 'gotten there' by now. Not only is what she meant by this unclear, but an attentive player may find it strange that she never actually expresses concern for the protagonist, hinting that she is just using her to get 'there' (the real world).
- Free-Sample Plot Coupon: The first Regalia, the titular Pocket Mirror, is found in the very first room of the game, revealing the first letter of the heroine’s name, G. The second Regalia, the Messer und Gabel, is also gotten only a little into Queen Egilette’s area, though you still have to go through the chapter itself. The other four Regalia require you to reach the end of each additional chapter and fulfill specific conditions to get the chapter’s good end, with the final ending depending on how many you have.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the mirror ballroom, one of the pumpkins says it’s just there to see the executions, even if you speak to it after the executions have already happened.
- Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Subverted in Goldener Traum. According to
Word of God, going back in time and preventing Elise from making her fatal wish, would not stop the contract with the Strange Boy, and would just pass her role on to another. The Little Goody Two Shoes ending implies the one contracting will be Goldia. - Inconsistent Dub: The characters are usually voiced, but not all the dialogue is.
- Interface Spoiler:
- The Strange Boy is initially presented as a nameless extra when encountered in the theater inside the ballroom, yet has a character portrait unlike the other extras, hinting that this character will have some importance to the story.
- Harpae's bad ending, Blindness, has her call out the protagonist's name though the name is all scratched out in red. But there are faint outlines of the letters of what the protagonist's name could have been. Attentive players would have figured it out on the bat that the protagonist's name is Goldia.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the bonus content, G asks Egliette if there's any dolls like her around because Fleta [her character sprite] always seems to carry Egliette around, even with Egliette not around. She explains that Fleta has various inanimate copies of her.
- Lights Off, Somebody Dies: In Harpae's world, during the party, the lights suddenly go off. The sound of clothes ripping is heard, and when the lights come on, one of the guests has been murdered.
- MacGuffin: The Regalia, a collection of six golden items that contain a letter of G’s full name as well as her memories. The titular pocket mirror is one, which G carries around with her, and she needs to get the others from the antagonist girls who rule various parts of the other world. The Big Bad in turn wants her pocket mirror and manipulates events to get the girls to take it.
- MacGuffin Title: The Pocket Mirror is the item that G always carries around and is needed to solve a few puzzles. It also turns out that the Big Bad, the Strange Boy, wants the pocket mirror for himself because it is the last key to her memories, so he creates Enjel and has her try to steal it in exchange for making her a real human.
- Mirror Scare:
- The first mirror G sees doesn't reflect her, and it frightens her.
- Ramped up in the mirror hall, where Lisette stalks you, then later pops out of one and gives chase. Later on, you have to find a pair of scissors in a similar hallway, and turning into a wrong corner will have you run into a chaser.
- Multiple Endings:
- Bad End 1: Porcelain: If G loses to Fleta in her boss fight, she becomes her unwilling companion for all eternity.
- Bad End 2: Blindness: If G follows Harpae to the attic, she becomes her prisoner and has her hair combed by her for all eternity.
- Witching Hour. If G reaches the end and didn't get any regalia, the Strange Boy ties Goldia up in the chair, stitches her mouth shut, and mocks her with a theater show highlighting several of the characters' backstories with a What the Hell, Hero? moment on each show, concluding with him killing Enjel. He then mocks Goldia for failing, claiming her soul at last.
- Platinum: If G didn't get all regalias, Goldia realizes that the girls she met over the course of her journey are part of her mind, but since she still doesn't remember who she is, she recreates herself into a delusion called Platinum, allowing her to erase all doubt in her mind. Platinum then proceeds to assimilate Fleta, Harpae, Lisette and Enjel into a Hive Mind.
- Dawn: If G got all regalias and loses against the final boss, Goldia finally manages to escape from her nightmares and wake up in reality. She finally remembers she was locked up in a mental hospital in 19th century Austria and the whole adventure was a dream. While she's still cursed, at least she has regained her sanity by accepting all the parts of herself, so the story ends on a hopeful note. The game files confirm that this is actually the true ending.
- Little Goody Two Shoes: If G got all regalias and wins against the final boss, Goldia finally accepts herself and with Enjel's help, escapes the dream. She wakes up in alternate timeline where Elise didn't contract with the Strange Boy and thus Goldia had a better life than the Dawn ending. While walking home, she finds the ruby shoes that the Strange Boy gave Elise once, hinting the possibility that she'll make a contract in the new timeline.
- Shattered Delusions: Added in Goldener Traum. If G loses against the final boss and found Henri's room, Enjel kills Goldia, causing the Strange Boy and Henri to arrive. When she demands the Strange Boy to make her a real girl, he kills her and turns her into a Golden Maiden, adding her to his collection alongside Rozenmarine, Holle, and the rest.
- New Game Plus: After beating the game once, a second playthrough is unlocked where there are new Pumpkin Charms to collect.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Some of the rooms have no music or sounds whatsoever, and the flashlight occasionally is so dim that you can barely see anything even in the space next to yours so you end up walking aimlessly, which can tense up the player expecting anything in the next few minutes.
- Ominous Save Prompt: As you're traversing the Mirror Hall, you get an automatic save prompt without even interacting with anything. A few steps past that point is one of the trickiest chase scenes of the game.
- Permanently Missable Content: Pumpkin Charms are scattered all across the game, and are used to unlock things in the bonus room. It also doesn't permit a lot of backtracking, so if you missed any, you need to wait for a New Game Plus to try and obtain them.
- Perilous Play: In the bad ending of "The Witching Hour", the Strange Boy kidnaps Goldia, stitches her mouth shut, and forces her to watch a horrific stage play in which he brutally murders all of the characters, mocking them all the while. Each one of the girls is strung up like a puppet, and the Strange Boy speaks for them.
- Precision F-Strike: While there are no swears in the dialog proper, when Lisette is trying to guilt trip G into giving the mirror to another Lisette who's hurt and on the ground, the latter gets a namebox with the name "Bitch". This is the only instance of swearing in the entire game.
- Press X to Not Die:
- Now and then, especially in an Escape Sequence, you may encounter jammed doors which need you to mash Z for a few seconds to force open. If you don't have enough of a lead on your pursuers, they can use these few seconds to close in on you.
- The Final Boss against Enjel that leads up to one of the good endings not only involves an Escape Sequence, but extended Button Mashing to rapidly ascend a flight of stairs.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Every girl that G meets gives this off, with Fleta also glowing green. Only Enjel subverts this, since her eyes glow gold. These are all coupled with Glowing Eyes of Doom.
- Red Herring: The purple doll at the library appears to have some importance to the plot, and even speaks to the player at the end of the demo, but only appears two more times without saying a word. Word of God confirms that the doll was a meaningless extra that has no importance to the story at large.
- The Reveal:
- Just before the area containing the main endings, a Perilous Play in the Hades area reveals that the Strange Boy who seemed to be a minor character is actually the Big Bad, and the supposed Big Good Enjel is actually a creation of, and The Dragon to, the Strange Boy.
- The two final endings reveal the protagonist's name, Goldia.
- The Dawn ending has several reveals about the game. If the player interacts with the desk (which contains a medical record), it is revealed that:
- The entire game was All Just a Dream. Goldia (full name: Goldia die Heilige) is a patient in a mental hospital in Austria.
- Egilette, Fleta, Harpae, and Lisette are the Literal Split Personalities of Goldia, who is diagnosed with dementia praecoxnote , dissociation, and lunacy.
- The setting, which was very vague previously, is shown to be during the 19th century, as Goldia was born on July 16th, 1862 in Linz, Austria and was admitted on 1878. It's confirmed her parents are dead.
- Rule of Symbolism: The plot and backstory of Pocket Mirror is hidden away in small details that players may not be likely to look over.
- Scenery Porn: The game maps were all designed with parallaxes and use particles. The results after layering of all the details is breath-taking given the basic capabilities of RPG Maker software.
- Schmuck Bait:
- At Queen Egliette's dinner party, you have to take a guess as to what Egliette will have. If the game's riddles have already gotten to the player, they will probably spend the time to investigate the dinner table and figure out that the Secret Dessert is missing. All the other food on the menu was next to the guests, so it's natural by process of elimination to assume Egliette will have the outlier. Except that special happens to be you. note
- While you're walking around the Dance Party's mansion, you can eavesdrop on a bunch of Rich Snobs gossiping about the Countess and a Widow, who is rumored to be a ghost that steal souls after midnight. You can later see the said Widow in the courtyard, who is just about the nicest, most polite person at the party. If you talk to her again, she'll sadly mention she's missing her handkerchief and she just looked about everywhere. Picking it up in the river earns you a Non-Standard Game Over.
- Shout-Out:
- In the ballroom, if you inspect the music sheet next to the piano, it says "U.N Owen Was Her?"
- One of the pumpkins in Fleta's trump room explains how to play a card-flipping game and mentions that it doesn't matter how many you flip, you gotta catch 'em all.
- The backstory about Elise making a contract with the Strange Boy as a child, only for him to return back when she was an adult in order to have Elise's daughter as payment for her wish is reminiscent of Rumpelstiltskin.
- Elise's backstory is based on The Red Shoes fairytale.
- The second bad end, in which Harpae combs the protagonist's hair and convinces her to "let go", is very reminiscent of the original Snow White fairytale, in which the evil queen, dressed as a peddler, attempts to kill Snow White for the second time via poisoned hair comb.
- The Platinum ending is one for the ending of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, in which Goldia transforms into a form reminiscent of Ultimate Madoka. The One-Winged Angel form that the Final Boss Enjel takes also resembles Demon Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. Also, both of the two are pawns of a demonic, male-presenting Big Bad. Word of God confirms that the series is one of their inspirations.
- The time spent with Enjel is one for Ib.
- In Ib, the titular red-eyed protagonist is brought into a limbo world from an art gallery, where she obtains a red rose (representing her life), makes a friend in Garry, and then unknowingly meets the Big Bad Mary (with a fake yellow rose), whom she also befriends. The antagonist seems to be very nice and cheerful but also desperately wants to exist by exchanging places with someone real. Towards the end of the game, the protagonist and her friend are trapped with antagonist in a child's crayon drawing, which they may or may not escape from, depending on the ending.
- In Pocket Mirror, the red-eyed protagonist with a pocket mirror (representing her name and identity) discovers and befriends a gold-eyed antagonist, Enjel (who had a pocket mirror that broke). Enjel is very nice but desperately wants the protagonist's pocket mirror so that she can once again have life. Towards the end of the game, the protagonist willingly follows the antagonist into a limbo, which could very well have been drawn in crayon by a child. The protagonist may or may not escape, depending on the ending.
- The final area is quite reminiscent of a Dive to the Heart from Kingdom Hearts.
- Surreal Horror: The world of the game is a dream-like world that starts out with more-or-less typical haunted-house horror but gets more and more bizarre and Yume Nikki-esque as the game progresses. Best exemplified in the fourth area, which is a Circus of Fear where the surreality reaches a peak. Justified as it IS All Just a Dream.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Not unexpected given the horror genre, but you can do things like pluck an innocent painting girl's eye out to get your mirror back, or snitch on an innocent plush fox and have it shot to death by a firing squad to progress the story.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The purple doll at the beginning area appears only two more times after its appearance in the library.
- With Friends Like These...: In the "Who've Done It"? puzzle, five girls are captured by a witch, accused of stealing a wand. Two of them, Maybell and Dorothy, are supposedly best friends and very close. But when they're interrogated, Dorothy quickly accused Maybell of stealing the wand. If you solve the puzzle correctly (revealing it was another girl), Maybell is disappointed that her friend tried to throw her under the bridge, while Dorothy reveals that she always hated Maybell.
