Its story is heartfelt and relatable, but meaningless progression and a devaluation of players’ time cause Headspun to fall flat on its face.
It’s always frustrating when an indie that’s novel and unique on paper fails to execute its ambitions effectively in practice, and Headspun falls headfirst into that unfortunate category. The game has all the signs that it was a labor of love by newcomer developer Superstring, using a hybrid of full motion video (FMV) and 2D adventure game mechanics to explore a relatable story of self-identity and recovery in an inventive way, but everything it tries to do is drowned out by a laundry list of annoyances and bugs. Headspun starts strong, but a deep disconnect between its interesting ideas and actual gameplay make it a slog that will leave players wanting to banging their heads against a wall.
In a twist on the usual FMV formula, Headspun focuses on Theo, a young man who awakes from a month-long coma after a near-fatal car accident that’s left him with severe memory loss. Rather than directly interact the world, players instead take control of his conscious mind, Ted, who runs Theo’s brain like a small company. Having also been put out of temporarily out of commission by the accident, it’s up to Ted to help Theo rehabilitate in order to return to his life, all the while contending with the recovery of lost memories, the appearance of a man purporting to be a close friend, and the obstinance of his polar opposite subconscious, Teddy.
Headspun has a good bit going on over the course of its story, probing into issues like workaholism, addiction, and losing one’s sense of self in the process of growing up. These themes are presented not only through the eyes of Theo in the nerve center from which Ted influences his actions (called Cortex Control), but even more so in the conversations had between Ted and Teddy. Teddy is a crass, unapologetically immature man-child, whereas Ted shares all of Theo’s newfound ills and vices and, being the sole manager of all Theo’s waking actions, is ultimately responsible for his current condition. The FMV acting won’t win any Academy Awards but is more than adequate despite some awkward stage directions, and the dialogue between Ted, Teddy, and other Cortex staff is generally well-written and plentifully peppered with dry British wit. There are a few twists and turns, and the ultimate payoff is imperfect but decent enough when strictly viewing the story on its own.
Of course, no part of a game is more than the sum of its parts, and therein lies Headspun’s biggest problem: it’s plain boring. Bedridden for the entirety of the game, Theo is controlled by Ted during waking hours, during which time story scenes can unfold and vacant hours can be spent completing shallow minigames and watching increasingly monotonous actions for Neurocredits. This generously issued currency can be used to repair Cortex’s handful of ruined facilities, hire more staff, and purchase upgrades. This system seems compelling at first, until it becomes obvious that most new facilities serve virtually no purpose, Ted’s fellow staff are fairly hollow workhorses that do little else but drive forward progress bars, and the only useful upgrades are the ones that speed the game faster toward its conclusion. As an interactive experience, Headspun is unrewarding, unengaging, and carelessly sluggish.
Dull gameplay could maybe be overlooked it weren’t for the fact that it feels like Headspun goes out of its way to be as annoying and bug-ridden as possible. Initially, a few small gripes with stiff animations and inconsistent mouse and keyboard controls are easy to brush off, but the number of irritations and errors players will experience by the end seem to exponentially snowball until reaching a fever pitch. FMV dialogue choices don’t really impact the story, text speed is unreasonably slow even at its “fastest” setting, there are myriad subtitle glitches, some repetitive scenes can’t be skipped, conversations are recycled, delegating work to staff takes way too long, and far, far too often can players back themselves into inescapable situations that force them to exit to reload their save. It reads like whiny nitpicking, but these are only around half of the issues this reviewer encountered with the game. Put simply, Headspun’s current state is absolutely unacceptable.
With some work, Headspun’s central premise of controlling a person Inside Out-style could really have potential to tell an intensely personal and human story while presenting entertaining gameplay opportunities along the way, and perhaps Superstring can stick the landing if they choose to revisit the concept in the future. As it stands, though, this isn’t it. Its story is moving if a bit anticlimactic, but meaningless progression, poor mechanics, and a complete devaluation of players’ time cause Headspun to fall flat on its face.
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Headspun is now available for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Screen Rant was provided a PC code for this review.
