MINDHACK is a
Kinetic Novel by
VODKAdemo? with typing game elements released on Steam Early Access in April 2023, with Chapter 4 released in December of 2023 and Chapter 5 released in March of 2025. In MINDHACK, the player takes the role of the Doctor, a 'Mindhacker' who is charged with using their abilities to hack people's minds to
forcibly rewrite criminals into cheerful, harmless people. The criminals the Doctor Mindhacks are afflicted by
BUGs, supernatural entities that cause destructive and violent impulses, which once had a cataclysmic war with humanity. In-between hacking criminals, the player socializes with the guards and the supercomputer running their facility.
This game provides examples of:
- All-Loving Hero: Com_Z loves all of humanity, including Bugs.
- Big Bad: FATAL ERROR was this for the Great Offscreen War. FORMAT believes it's still the greatest threat, while Com_Z disagrees.
-
Bizarro Episode: Chapter 5 has nothing to do with the plot regarding FATAL ERROR and the war, and revolves around a spaceship suddenly crashing into the facility. - Cargo Cult: The LAGOM House is a cult that attracts members by fear-mongering about The End of the World as We Know It. Their God of choice being supposedly inorganic Itself makes them like a Cargo Cult in the literal sense.
- Child Prodigy: The Doctor used to be one.
- The Cutie: Com_Z actively plays up the cuteness aspect, to the point that the program they use is called 'CUTE_SY 2000'.
- The Don: Unid is the leader of the Bloody Paella gang and is not shy about making that known. He and some other members also own motorcycles, making them a bit like a Bōsōzoku.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: This is the result of Mindhacking, as seen with Unid and Yamamura.
- Mind Rape: The act of Mindhacking definitely falls into this.
- Monster of the Week: Every chapter revolves around a character the Doctor must hack.
- My Beloved Smother: As Rebecca describes, FORMAT acts like a mother to the Doctor. She is immensely overbearing and doting of them, complimenting them at every opportunity with words like “cute”, “precious” and “beloved”. She is so protective of the Doctor that she forbids them from even stepping outside of the Mindhack facility. Doctor is equally as dependent on FORMAT, only ever saying “Yes, FORMAT” when addressing her and passively saying things like that she’s “always right” and they trust her “more than any human”.
- Orphanage of Fear: Unid grew up in an orphanage where he was physically abused by the headmistress. As the other children there were too afraid to stand up for him, they ignored his abuse and stayed complicit, leading him down the path to becoming a gang leader so that no one would ignore him again.
- Parental Abandonment: MINDHACK’s cast is chock-full of absentee, nonexistent or dead parents. Both Unid and SINO are orphans. Ivrig was neglected by his family and his father refused to take him home from the city where he got scammed. Neither FORMAT or Com_Z have parents, as they were built by a research team. Doctor supposedly has (or had) loving parents who wrote them letters every day after they became a Mindhacker—however, the Doctor has seemingly forgotten about them over the last 20 years they’ve lived at the facility. Rebecca’s mother would verbally berate her over the phone for her career choice at HOTFIX. Hugo was travelling in space for so long that he never got to watch his daughters grow up. He would then go on to effectively die once being consumed by alien parasites. The Newbie Guard lives with his mother, but no mention of his father has been made so far.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Com_Z is this purposefully. Bonus dialog reveals that their Cute_Sy program has a database of human reactions their advanced AI selects from to make them more approachable.
- Sadist: SINO takes an almost sensual pleasure in torturing people to death, getting excited hearing their death rattles just before they die.
- The Un-Favourite: Ivrig is viewed as a disappointment by his family compared to his brilliant younger sister Miki. He harbors immense jealousy and bitterness for his neglect, having to work extra hard just to keep up with her and still never getting praised. However, despite this strain in their relationship, neither of them really have a Sibling Rivalry with each other; Ivrig laughs off the idea of hating his family while Miki appears immensely guilty and heartbroken when meeting him after his Mindhack.
- Villain Protagonist: Even outside of their job being Mind Rape, the Doctor purposefully nearly kills Yamamura as an experiment, enjoys destroying flowers, and is implied from Rebecca's reactions to take active pleasure in destroying people's minds.
- The Worm That Walks: Hugo Patrick, particularly after he's removed from his suit.
