When I first booted up Mindlock – The Apartment, I wasn’t hunting for a hidden gem.

I was after something light: a few chuckles, a pixel hunt or two, and the comforting chaos of an inventory screen brimming with questionably useful junk.

You know, standard point-and-click fare.

Instead, what I stumbled into was a multi-hour existential therapy session disguised as an adventure game. And honestly? I’m still emotionally unpacking.

Built entirely by a single developer, Mindlock – The Apartment is as impressive as it is quietly devastating.

It doesn’t shout for your attention with flashy mechanics or genre-breaking twists. Instead, it creeps in softly, slowly, like the sinking feeling you get after combining your only key with a piece of bubblegum and realising the solution now somehow involves a puppet and your unresolved trauma.

You play as Colin, an aggressively average man with a soul-crushing job and the kind of posture that screams mid-level burnout.

One morning, as he’s getting ready for another day of toaster sales (yes, really), his front door simply vanishes.

No key. No lock. No exit. Just a creeping dread and the kind of interior design choices that would make David Lynch raise an eyebrow.

What follows is a surreal, deeply emotional journey through Colin’s fractured psyche, haunted memories, and the claustrophobic space he calls home.

The apartment twists and reshapes like a funhouse mirror of the mind.

One moment you’re rifling through drawers for batteries, the next you’re confronting your childhood fears through a snarky talking puppet.

It’s Silent Hill meets Monkey Island – if Monkey Island occasionally asked you to reckon with your fear of dying alone.

Mechanically, Mindlock sticks to genre roots. Classic point-and-click staples are all here: bottomless inventory, dialogue trees, quirky characters, and the occasional “what in the pixelated hell am I supposed to do with this?” moment.

Most puzzles lean toward logical solutions, though the game lovingly nods to the genre’s proud tradition of absurd item combos.

But the real puzzle lies deeper, emotional rather than mechanical.

Mindlock doesn’t ask how to escape. It asks why you’re trapped in the first place.

Its standout feature is the “mind puzzle” mechanic – an internal logic system you piece together as Colin reflects on his life.

It’s smartly designed, refreshingly original, and hits with the weight of a therapy session penned by a poet. Somehow, despite the heavy themes, the game never forgets to be fun.

It’s borderline unbelievable that one person made this game. The hand-drawn art is intimate and expressive, effortlessly shifting between cosy whimsy and suffocating melancholy.

The apartment warps in dreamlike ways, mirroring Colin’s mental state in each surreal transition.

The voice acting? Surprisingly stellar. Every line, no matter how bizarre, lands with conviction. And the soundtrack? Deserves its own award, especially for that in-game music video. (Yes, there’s a music video. Yes, it rocks.)

Despite taking place almost entirely within a single apartment, Mindlock never feels repetitive. Each twist, whether it’s a flooded hallway or a mirror that talks back, reshapes the space both physically and emotionally.

The apartment itself becomes a character, revealing or concealing truths with every creaky door and flickering light.

The pacing is deliberate. Colin walks slowly – a point that might frustrate some players, especially when you’re retracing steps for the umpteenth time because you forgot to pixel-hunt a shoelace.

But that slow pace reinforces the tone. This isn’t a speedrun; it’s a slow, molasses-thick trudge through the weight of mental illness, one shuffling click at a time.

Where most point-and-click games hand you puzzles, Mindlock – The Apartment hands you emotions.

It explores depression, isolation, lost dreams, and identity – not with preachy monologues, but with poignant symbolism and quiet, devastating clarity.

It trusts the player to feel. It doesn’t spell everything out, and that trust pays off.

Is it perfect? Not quite. The game stumbles occasionally. Some inventory puzzles lean more on trial-and-error than insight, and there’s no skip option for repeat scenes, which can grate during long treks.

But those are tiny cracks in what is otherwise a beautifully fractured mirror of the human condition.

Mindlock – The Apartment is one of the most emotionally resonant point-and-click adventures I’ve ever played.

It’s raw, poetic, sometimes ridiculous, and completely unforgettable.

It’s one of the rare games where I didn’t just want the protagonist to escape – I wanted him to heal.

So yes, you’ll pick up everything that isn’t nailed down. You’ll combine nonsense items with quiet hope.

You’ll curse Colin’s walking speed. And somewhere between fixing a clock with existential dread and talking to a trauma puppet, you’ll realise that this strange little game, crafted by one man in one surreal apartment, is quietly telling one of the most powerful stories of the year.