Player reviews: 0% positive0 reviews
Runs on: Windows

Where to get it

Steam

Action · Arcade

Mindwave

Make your way to the top of Mindscape Tower and delve into the minds of your opponents in a cerebral microgame frenzy!

Released: —
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Action Arcade Indie
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Single-player
Themes: Action
Languages: English

About

Mindwave (stylized in all caps) is an upcoming action game developed by American indie developer HoloHammer. It is a fast-paced minigame collection inspired by Nintendo's WarioWare series, taking place in the Mindscape Tower, where the protagonist Pandora aims to win a cash prize contest involving entering other contestants' minds and playing microgames.

A demo was released on Steam in January 2025 alongside a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, receiving positive reception.

›Story

Blackout City— home to Mindscape Co., creators of the world's most played cognitive reality game: MINDWAVE. A game where players link their brains together and go head-to-head in an onslaught of feelings and memories.

The time has come for Mindscape Co.'s annual MINDWAVE Tournament, hosted at Mindscape Tower. A young girl named Pandora finds herself with a Platinum Ticket, granting her entry. The only thing standing between her and the large cash prize is several rounds of nonstop mental mayhem.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In Mindwave, the player plays as Pandora, a young girl who enters the Mindscape Tower after winning a Platinum Ticket to enter the titular "cognitive reality" game show alongside numerous other contestants. The game's aim is to continuously win against other contestants, advancing in the tower until reaching the top floor and receiving a cash prize.

The core gameplay of Mindwave is inspired by the WarioWare games; the player plays several short and fast-paced minigames known as "microgames", each with short commands that the player must fulfill. The speed of the microgames gradually increases as the player progresses, with alternate variations of prior microgames being introduced. Since Mindwave is a PC game, all of the microgames use either keyboard, mouse, or arrow key inputs.

Development

In January 2025, developer HoloHammer released a demo of the game, alongside a campaign on Kickstarter to raise funds for the full game, as part of the Steam Next Fest. The campaign lasted from January 14 to February 14, 2025, and ultimately raised US$443,442, surpassing its goal of US$40,000.

With many of the Kickstarter campaign's stretch goals being met, there are plans for multiple additional features including gamepad support, an additional microgame collection accessible after completing the main story, Steam Workshop support, downloadable content, and an online versus mode, the latter of which is to be added post-launch.

Reception

During the Kickstarter campaign, Mindwave's demo received positive reception from critics and journalists. Nic Reuben from Rock Paper Shotgun described the game as addictive, calling it "quite difficult to escape." Dwayne Jenkins from Vice compared it to Psychonauts (2005), stating that Mindwave "made [him] feel today what [he] felt when [he] played Psychonauts all those years ago," and that it "perfectly understood [him] as a human being." Oli Welsh from Polygon called the presentation "anarchic" and wrote, "Mindwave is neither as obsessively minimalist nor as random as WarioWare, but that's OK [sic]. HoloHammer is doing something else instead, something pretty exciting; it's taking WarioWare's splintered vision of gaming and building it back up into something whole."