[Mod][XCL] [0.25.9] Mind Games: Redux

[AthenaWilliams]

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[XCL] [0.25.9] Mind Games: Redux

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Mind Games
A videogame shop for X-Change Life. Originally by EdgeSkylark, ported and expanded by Athena.

There is a videogame shop on the lower level of Paradise Mall. It sells twelve fictional games, each with its own soundtrack and gameplay footage, and a proprietary joystick that is very obviously a dildo. Buy a computer, buy the joystick, buy a game, and an evening in your bedroom becomes a night in.

Beat a game often enough and it gives you Identity. Play too many days running and your stepdad opens your bedroom door to have a word about it, and what he finds when he does depends on what you were doing.

Version 1.4.0 is a port to base 0.25.9 and a substantial expansion.

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All twelve games are real minigames now

They used to be three base minigames wearing twelve skins. Every one of them is now the thing it parodies, written from its own catalogue entry:

• Numberwang. A gameshow quiz that declares "That's Numberwang!" on rules you cannot infer. The comedy is the mechanic, so being unfair is correct behaviour.
• Finale Fantasia. A turn based JRPG battle against Soapiroth. Read the aura, break the elemental barrier, use the two turn window it opens. Mashing attack loses.
• Behold the Eyes. A grid dungeon crawl. Your torch is the clock and its radius shrinks as it burns. Scanathar never chases you, it opens an eye down a line and fires along it next turn, so pillars are cover. Traps are visible in light and invisible in the dark.
• Uber Plumber Kart. A top down racer. Eight karts, three laps, four circuits cycled by your own win count. Item quality is worse the better you are placed, and the spiny hits whoever leads from anywhere, so the front is a dangerous place to be.
• Road Brawler. A real fighting game. Every move has startup, active and recovery frames, fighters occupy space, and holding back is blocking.
• Uber Plumber Bros. A precision platformer with coins, enemies and lives. Losing your last life is a real ending.
• Spikey Speedster. A momentum platformer. Pits want speed, spikes want restraint, and reading which is coming is the whole game.
• Sportsball. A needle sweeps a bar. Stop it in the green for a sports point, the gold for two, miss and the other sports team scores. The game has no idea what sport it is.
• Extreme Ironing. Heat management. The iron presses whatever is under it and the longer it sits the hotter that square gets. Cover the whole garment before the clock and never dwell.
• Town of Magic. Three lanes, sixteen turns, four spells and a Focus pool. Keep them off Celica. Three parts, each with its own rule, and one of them punishes single target fire.
• Tentaclevan. Meet the quota, dodge the police, and remember that a fuller van is a louder one.
• Captivity. A survival wave shooter in three parts. Ammo, reload timing, and knowing when a top up is worth it.
  

Each one still declares the same parameters base reads, so the skill check, the XP display, the "Real Time Minigames: Disabled" fallback and the skip links all still work. The custom game is the middle. Base is still the frame.

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Mika Tanaka

The shop assistant who used to be an unnamed body carrying boxes now has a name, a face and a counter to stand behind.

• A staff pick, rerolled weekly out of the live catalogue rather than a fixed list, so a game added later or by another mod can be picked. Buying her pick pleases her. Letting it expire does not.
• A conversation bank gated on your own library and progress, so what she says is a read on how you have actually been playing.
• The joystick sale is her scene now, which is the beat the shop's running joke was always built towards.
  

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For modders: add your own game

Any mod can put its own game on the shop's PC rack with one tagged passage. No JavaScript, no load order to coordinate, and no edits to this mod:

:: hacker sim pc game [mindgames_pc_games]
{
  (set:$mg_pc_registry to it + (a:(dm:
    "id","mymod_hacker",
    "name","Hacker Simulator",
    "price",120,
    "blurb","Type green text at a wall of green text until the bank opens.",
    "play passage","hacker sim play"
  )))
}

Only id, name and play passage are required. Everything else falls back to a sane default, so a two line registration works and a detailed one is rewarded. Your play passage can be a scene, your own minigame, or anything else. A worked example ships as the separate Mind Games PC Example mod, and the full record shape is documented at the top of mind-games-pc.twee.

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Also in 1.4.0

• Fourteen achievements, including one per game.
• The computer requirement is no longer a silent dead end. The shop tells you what you need and where to get it.
• A shared arcade harness, so every game inherits its frame, its accessibility fallback and its lifetime guards rather than reimplementing them.
• Difficulty for every game was set by simulating the shipped code across hundreds of sessions per strategy, not by feel.
  

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Requirements

• X-Change Life 0.25.7 or later
• Mind Games Store -Media, the companion media mod. Both files are required.
• Paradise Mall Expanded is supported but not required.
  

Install

Drop both .xcl files into the game's mods folder and rebuild in the Mod Loader.

Credits

Original mod by EdgeSkylark, version 1.31, targeting base 0.21.7. The shop, the joystick, the game catalogue, the stepdad storyline and the Reclusive Gamer compulsion are his design. Version 1.4.0 is the port and expansion by Athena.
 

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• Submitter
  AthenaWilliams
• Submitted
  08/26/26
• Category
  Gameplay Changes & Events
• Requirements