Designer Anne Popkess began Mindfighter as a book, and this was included in the game box. The book is 160 pages long, acts as copy protection, and unlike many 'books' that come with adventure games, is well worth reading in its own right (although the quality of writing is markedly inferior to Magnetic Scrolls' novellas, e.g. The Pawn). Everything in Mindfighter is the result of painstaking research. The programmers even use digitized photos of Southampton as some of the backdrops in the game.

The game's hallmark is the excellent, extremely atmospheric writing that evokes the true horrors of nuclear holocaust. Puzzles are mostly logical and believable. As well as more typical adventure problems, Mindfighter challenges you to survive the real-life problems that you would face when trying to survive as an outcast in this fascist state. You must help Robin find shelter at night, find safe food and water to build up your strength, and avoid the guards unless he feels strong enough to attack them. Although most puzzles are logical, a few of them require some lateral thinking or running the guess-the-verb procedure. Some puzzles are merely copy-protection questions, which can be solved by reading the Mindfighter book carefully. There is even an RPG element in the game in that Robin's strength level is monitored, and enemies have their own strength level that must be overcome in combat. Although I don't usually like fight sequences in IF titles, the ones in Mindfighter work well, and in fact add to the believability of the whole story. There are many people wandering around, some of them friendly. Most characters go about their own business, and many puzzles require you to order them around (you can control their minds with your para-psychological powers). Just like you, the NPCs have their own physical statistics and emotional states, but much of this is invisible to the player and goes on behind the scenes.

The game interface, beyond the familiar graphics window and text parser, is excellent. Pressing ENTER at the prompt or clicking the mouse brings up a control panel. From this menu, you can toggle the display mode, turn the printer and music on and off, toggle verbose/brief description modes, undo the last turn, check your status, or save/load/quit the game. The game's vocabulary is quite large, and the parser understands most common synonyms and abbreviations.

Overall, Mindfighter is a thoroughly entertaining, serious, and thought-provoking game, which draws you into the brutal reality of the future. Although the game sounds a bit dogmatic at times, it is never really overbearing, and the intriguing plot and well-written characters will keep you interested for hours on end. Highly recommended.