Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Love, Divided,’ two strangers meet each other and fall in love without ever having laid eyes on one another. The story begins with Valentina, a struggling musician gearing up for a big audition, who moves into a new apartment only to discover that it has paper-thin walls that connect it to the apartment of the adjacent building where lives a young game developer, David. He is an eccentric who spends his days cooped up inside his apartment working on a new game.
How does he make money to sustain himself? He made a game years ago that has been selling so well that David makes enough royalties from it to focus on nothing but his next creation. His first game is called Breaking Mind, which has the potential of being sold internationally. But is it a real game? SPOILERS AHEAD
Breaking Mind is Fictional But Modelled on Real Board Games
There is no real-life counterpart of Breaking Mind. The game is entirely fictional and seems like a crossover between Parchisi and Mahjong with a twist. Even though it sparks curiosity, the fans of ‘Love, Divided’ are unlikely to find the game in their nearest store as it was created simply as a background detail for David’s character to help the audience understand him better, especially the point about him staying in his apartment the whole time and never wanting to leave.
There are only a few things that the audience finds out about Breaking Mind, as David doesn’t seem too keen to talk about it, which isn’t just because he is moving on from his first creation but also because it holds intimate memories for him. A scene in the second half of the film reveals that David, Nacho and Nacho’s sister, who got engaged to David later, used to play this game when they were children. They came up with it on their own and would decide their own rules until, eventually, they had to settle on a particular set of rules when the game was ready to be sold to others.
At first glance, Breaking Mind appears to be a board game that has tiles of different colors and different patterns (somewhat like Mahjong). It is arranged in an upward-moving spiral, and according to the rules, the winner is the person who gets all the pieces of their color to the top. The person to do it first wins. It sounds somewhat like Parchisi, which has similar rules, though it is played on a flat board rather than a spiral. The other rules of Breaking Mind are not revealed in the film, but it is clear that it requires its players to have a keen mind, and only the sharpest one will win.
Read More: Netflix’s Love, Divided: What True Story Inspired the Rom-Com?
