Mind Your Manors is a puzzle platforming game with a bonus appeal of genderbending transformation made by Pip, creator of the webcomic series Sins and also a plethora of other games. I'd say his games were a big inspiration and they deserve a lot of love which is why I'm doing this, a guide that aims to both spread the word of Sins games and also be a guide to the game itself.
So, without further ado, let's play!
As note, the game is a puzzle platformer with not a lot of puzzling and lots of platforming, split into 4 sections with some boss battles interspersed. Through it all, the player uses the arrow buttons to move and jump, and spacebar to act and attack.
The player's Will is presented as a life bar, and getting it all drained means you lose, being draggedinto the shadows without much fanfare. For more fanfare, stick around for the description of the multiple endings. ;)
The first section of the game presents the player with some degree of puzzling, in which they must find the key to a door, hidden among dressers and doors that may sometimes contain cursed items of clothing that chip on your willpower.
The second section of the game has the player running a vertical maze while avoiding piles of cursed clothing and also a ghostly maid. Navigation is not a problem, aside from crumbling tiles that cannot support your weight for long (or at all, mostly).
Then the maid acts as a boss fight, in which the player has to dodge and attack. Just dodge and attack until it's all done!
The third section is a tall jumping gauntlet, with the way to the top littered with accursed ghostly sexy lips that hinder your ability to progress, and a cloud of perfume that will drain your will if you stay in it for too long.
After the climb, two bosses which work about the same way as the first. Why two at once instead of one before the maid chase and one here, I'm not sure.
The final section is a maze littered with spiked that will also chip on your willpower if you fall on them. Find your way forward and into a portal to escape. If you are lucky, you may even be unscathed!
If the bosses are giving you trouble, there's a glitch that may help... for whatever reason probably having to do with how the engine deals with input, attacking has a delay between rounds... unless you have another key pressed. So, to wail on your enemies, keep the down key pressed and go to town on that spacebar!
So, the big draw of games like Mind Your Manors are the different endings and how to achieve them. In MYM this is defined by some orbs that you can find by looking around or performing a few feats throughout the game.
Each section of the game contains one white orb and one dark orb, and the final count of the orbs you have is what determines the ending yout get. In this section, I'll be describing how to get each orb in each section, all before finally spoiling which endings this game features...
The white orb in this section is achieved by reaching the last door with the minimum amount possible of Will. To do that, in the third section you should interact with every door and dresser before finally leaving, and you will get it automatically.
The dark orb in this sectoin is hidden in the dresser in the very middle of the ground floor of the second section. Interact, get the orb, simple like that.
The white orb is picked up by taking the easy path (or only possible path, if you've crumbled way too many floor tiles), which is by taking the right after the vertical section.
The dark orb is found at the end of the hard path, and this one is really tricky because after going left on that bifurcation there, you will have to pass through a whole gauntlet of piles of clothes on crumbled tiles.
The catch here is that the tiles only crumble if you land on them, so if you start walking from the firm tiles to the left, you'll never break them. This means you'll have to take the assault of all those piles of clothing head on, so you better not be low on will...
To get the white orb, let yourself be taken by the perfume cloud and have your will reduced to nothing.
Just watch out because what follows is a boss fight. You'll probably want to save before getting your will all drained.
Once again, it's all a matter of taking the less obvious past, going under the door to the right and down a shaft. It will send you right towards the cloud, so you'll need to navigate the platforms so you won't get stuck and drained before you reach the bottom where the dark orb is.
Pick the gift right at the entrance. This one is literally a given!
Take the lower path, which is totally filled with spikes. You'll have to time your jumps so you only touch the spikes as least as possible, and at the end you'll find the orb, right near a shortcut to the ending, too!
In essence, the number of orbs of each kind you have determine your ending. The catch is that the dark orbs only affect your ending if you get all of them, otherwise it's all on how many white orbs you have..
Requirements: 1 or less White Orb
Arguably the "good ending", the hero escape unscathed. He's glad for it, but are you? This is a boring ending, let's face it...
Requirements: 2 or 3 White Orbs
Things get interesting as the Manor's influence has changed the protagonist's body to that of a woman. A significant and certainly permanent change, but not too extreme...
Requirements: 4 White Orbs
If the player revels too much on the influence of the manor (letting their will drop to 0, accepting gifts from the obviously malicious house...), they get an even more extreme change into a buxom bimbo in very inappropriate attire... and then gets judged for it, too! People are so mean, and I can only imagine the way back to town must have been a pain in those heels... XD
Requirements: 4 Dark Orbs
The final quasi-secret ending of the game has the hero being grabbed just as he almost reaches the portal out by the shadows, and given a magical makeover that turns them into the Madam, condemned to be served by the spirits of the Manor itself. Not the best ending, but certainly a coveted one...