Games about Mental Illness
mtc...@g.rit.edu
I made this for my "Games and Literature" class. It is a collection of games about mental illness. This is supposed to be for serious depictions where mental illness is one of the main themes of the game.
The Yellow Wallpaper
This was made during Public Domain Jam where it was awarded with “Stayed True to Source Material” and “Most Innovative Use of the Source Material”. It’s based off the short-story of the same name. It’s about a women who is forced to stay in the room and incessantly rest on the behest of her physiologist husband. Her husband wants this because she seems to be suffering from depression after the birth of her child. The yellow wallpaper of this room becomes the focal point of her increased deterioration.
The story can be read as a semi-biographical account of the author, Charlotte Gilman. She was a patient suffering from depression, and she was prescribed “rest cure.” She was told to live as calm and restful a life as possible with as little mental stimulation as possible. This proved ineffective.
The game works in a cycle. The player starts in the void outside the room looking in. Text from the book is written out in front of the player. Eventually the player is put inside the room. In this mode, the player has limited time to find more text. The player does this by approaching segments of the yellow wallpaper whenever he or she sees some type of silhouetted figure behind it. When the player does so, the wallpaper is ripped at that spot. When the time is up, the player is taken back to outside the room looking in. The game ends when all the wallpaper is ripped.
The game does a good job a systematizing the protagonists descent. The limited amount of time you are given inside the room reflects the horror of rest therapy. However, the story itself is hard to understand for people who have not read the short story. The quotes and excerpts from the book are disjointed. I would recommend reading the short-story before playing.
The Short Story: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wall_Paper
Game: http://ysty.itch.io/the-yellow-wallpaper
Public Domain Jam: http://itch.io/jam/the-public-domain-jam
The Cat Lady
This is a point-and-click adventure game made in Adventure Game Studio. It stars Susan Ashworth. She is forty-year-old women living alone in a flat. Her only real companion are the stray cats who come visit her. One day, she commits suicide, only to find out that some being in the underworld has made her immortal. She is tasked with killing five “parasites”. Of all these games, this is the most traditional and is a commercial product.
The game is a horror, thriller filled with blood and gore. The game uses black and white, distorted photos, and other techniques to create a threatening atmosphere. This game is very intense and is not for the faint of heart. Part of the mystery of this game is trying to figure out why Susan is in such a dark space.
The game puts you in the mindset of Susan. She views the world as ugly, so the world appears ugly to the player. The most cleaver piece of this though are the parasites. Susan is told that the parasites will try to get close to her and pretend to be her friend. So the game makes you distrustful of people who say they are here to help you. This matches the viewpoint of many people suffering from depression who drive other people away and purposely isolate themselves.
This game is by someone who, although does not consider himself depressed, knows depression. In interviews he is not completely clear, but I can imagine that he knows depression on some intimate level. I would not consider this game auto-biographical, at least I hope not.
Again, not for the faint of heart.
Website: thecatlady.co.uk
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/253110
Actual Sunlight
This game was made in RPG Maker. It is about Evan Winter. He is a very depressed and lonely man on the edge of suicide. We play through days of his life, commuting to and from work and examining everything. When you examine an object, you will read what seems to be a short writing by winter about it or relating to it. These writing are very compelling and hard-hitting. It forces you to understand his world view.
Evan is not terribly likable and is a bit of a creeper. He is living a self-destructive life-style and does not stop it. Yet is writings help you see where he is coming from. It is a bit like Catcher in the Rye in that regard.
The game keeps building and building on the hopelessness of Evan’s life. It seems that nothing will ever get better in Evan’s world view. It is honestly clear from the start where this is going. The author, Will O’Neil, himself interjects in the middle of the story and gives a message to the player. He interjects to whoever who may be depressed that they should not dare to.
This game is semi-autobiographical. Evan seems like an author self-insertion. This is probably the hardest to consume of all these games, even harder than The Cat Lady. It feels like an interactive suicide note.
Website: http://www.actualsunlight.com/
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/288040/
Errant Signal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js1OsJZq2Vg
Depression Quest
This game is a depression simulation. It is functionally a choose-your-own-adventure novel where you play someone suffering from depression. Unlike the other games where you explore a character suffering from depression, this game is about how YOU would deal with depression. It asks you to answer the ways you may answer.
The game shows you what depression is like by giving you several options and then crossing a few of those options off. It is like a multiple-choice question where the best answer is crossed out already, forcing you to pick something sub-optimal. If you manage to decrease your depression level, this happens less and less. If you get more depressed, this happens more.
The game tracks three main variables: your depression level, whether you are in therapy, and whether you are taking medication. Despite the goal of getting rid of depression, the game is not really about winning or losing. It’s about exploring decisions. It is important that the game ends before your depression can truly be considered gone and that depression is tracked as a meter.
Zoe Quinn, one of the creators, made the decision not to provide a suicide outcome. Thoughts of suicide never come up. She said that she wanted to avoid triggering people who may actually have suicidal tendency. It is important to note that clinical depression does not equal suicidal thoughts.
Website: http://www.depressionquest.com/
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/270170/
Errant Signal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js1OsJZq2Vg
My Final Project for Autopathography
Our professor also teaches a class on the autobiographical literature of the mentally ill. This mainly involved those suffering from manic depression. As part of this class, I decided to try my hand at making a short game about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTS688FReGE&feature=youtu.be
It’s actually allot like the Yellow Wallpaper game, which is fitting as we had the same inspiration. (I came up with it first though) It depicts the same room from the point of view of someone who oscillates between manic-happiness and depressing. The player is randomly taken to three version of the room, including a normal version.
Tell me what you guys think. If anyone is interested in actually playing it, I can send you the actual level file.
Conclusion
I think I’m going to be playing some happy games for a while. Please comment on this thread about experiences you had with these games or playing some other game about mental illness that I may not have heard of.