Games have a problem. A lot of the time
they aren't about anything. And often, the ones that are about
SOMETHING aren't about anything important. With development budgets
that stretch into the millions and $60 price tags I frankly find it
insulting that the money I spend on games, that often promise lofty
features such as “deep and immersive story telling” or an
“emotional experience”, rarely deliver in these areas.
Well something has happened. In recent
years indie developers have really been giving it their all to take
up the slack that the triple A developers have been all too happy to
pave over with advertising money.
Depression Quest is a new game brought
to you by the compulsively creative Zoe Quinn and the games critic
Patrick Lindsey with music by Isaac Schankler. Depression Quest is more of a browser based interactive story book than a game really but certainly falls into the category of a gamified story book.
If you have any personal experience of living
with depression you will find something profoundly relatable
in the “Over 40k words of interactive fiction“. And if you have
ever been close to someone with depression or with a different experience
of depression from your own, you will find yourself coming out the
other side with a greater understanding of their plight.
It takes a good hour to complete a
play-through and its free to play at their website. There is a pay-what-you-want option which I strongly encourage you to use. A portion
of the proceeds will go to supporting iFred “a charity that aims to fight back
against depression and the stigma against it.”
In Depression Quest you play as a nameless “mid-twenties
human being” (I guess it was going to be gender neutral at one
point) who struggles with depression. As the story unfolds you make
decisions about how you're going to deal with various situations,
mainly related to social functions and interactions with other people including your girlfriend and family and how best to function in the world with the constant obstacle of your condition.
At the bottom of the page there is a 3 part summary which displays the status and efficacy of your condition, treatment (if
any) and medication (if any).
The decisions you make as you proceed
through the, well thought out narrative, guide, not only where the
story will take you, but also, depending on how you feel as a result
of the consequences of those decisions, what options are open to you at all.
You can't go from “make an excuse to stay home” to “Socialize
enthusiastically” from one question to the next. Illustrating how,
while suffering depression, its not a matter of whether or not you
take these avenues but instead how it feels like many of the
possibilities in life are not even open to you at all.
This extends to the point where if you
make a few destructive decisions you can quickly find yourself in a
downward spiral that makes you unwilling to seek professional help or
even talk to those closest to you about your problems thus reinforcing the destructive downward spiral you set yourself on.
There are a few criticisms to be made
though. There are a few typo's and syntax errors peppered throughout
the story (which is entirely text based) and I have a hard time
believing that people so close to you would ever be under the
impression that “you just get a little sad sometimes” is an
acceptable explanation for your quite clearly depressive behaviour.
In reality they perhaps may not exactly KNOW but at the same time
would understand that there's more to it than just being a little sad
sometimes.
Nitpicking aside I believe that
Depression Quest achieved exactly what it set out to do and is
something of a triumph in story telling while carrying an important
message.
*has struggled with emotional problems from an early age*
