Created and directed by MOTHER fan “Handish2000” or “Otherhand” in the year 2009, Mother: Cognitive Dissonance is a fangame that is a side-story and sequel to MOTHER 1 and a prequel to MOTHER 2, explaining what happened between the two games, hence the subtitle, “Between Two Times”. Starring a rag-tag group of aliens, the game chronicles their mission of keeping the Apple of Enlightenment out of Giegue’s hands.

Developed using RPG Maker 2000, the game is known and celebrated for being one of the first fully-completed MOTHER fangames. This game features an all-new cast of characters (some even becoming fan-favorites in of themselves), a completely original soundtrack featuring works from Bill Eager, Maximus_32, Quincy Pringle and more, and a compelling fan story that connects the events of MOTHER 1 and 2.
Learn more about the game on its website!

In January 2021, Mother Forever had the chance to interview the game’s director to find out more about his experience creating this game and the time he spent in the MOTHER community.
Read our interview with Otherhand here!

Web Player

Our website hosts a playable version of Cognitive Dissonance with its unofficial 2.5d “Magicant Edition” upgrade that fixes bugs and adds other quality of life improvements.

Follow the button below to play it at mothercogdis.com!
Also below for Spanish speakers… ¡Ya disponible la traducción al castellano de MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance! A team translated the whole game into Spanish, which can be played below at mothercogdis.com/esp.

And, if you’re playing on mobile and want to enable a certain something that requires number inputs, the following links will allow you to input numbers with alternate touchscreen control layouts: mothercogdis.com/numpad and mothercogdis.com/esp-numpad for the Spanish translation.

Known Bugs:

• Battle backgrounds only appear when seeing them for the 2nd time due to how the player streams its assets.

Downloads

Below is a package download for the game that includes its installer and its 2.5d version. If you’d like to upgrade to that version after installing, merge the installed “cogdis” folder with the one of the same name found in the 2.5d folder. A version with the Spanish translation can also be found below.

The game was originally only developed with a Windows operating system in mind, but if you happen to use Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, or probably any other non-Windows OS, you can play Cognitive Dissonance using the free and open-source application EasyRPG.

Screenshots

Video Trailer