Mental Health

Sep

2020

Lydia

A Grim Fairy Tale

Imagination does wonders to reality. For kids, toys can come to life; pillows and blankets make fortresses; and imaginary friends provide constant company. As we get older, we lose a bit of the magic, but we can daydream of winning the lotto or telling off a coworker without getting fired. Imagination helps us cope with or escape from our current struggles. Even the monster under our bed is much less frightening than the skeletons we keep in our closets or freezers.

Unless we give into our delusions, imagination has its limits, and reality never leaves. Lydia plays with this concept, pitting a girl’s imagination and innocence against the trauma she experiences in the real world. Although video games act as a form of escapism in general, Lydia does not shy away from the harsh realities of substance abuse, parental neglect, and death. You’ll find fantastical elements throughout its short runtime, but they won’t soften the gut punch the game delivers, and that pain is welcome.

What is it?

Lydia plays as a series of vignettes about its titular character’s life, showing how her childhood is impacted by her parents’ substance use. Reality and fiction blend together as her pink bear, Teddy, comes to life and attempts to use her imagination to shield her from her distress. Considering this adventure will take you around an hour, detailing any more of the plot will spoil it. Suffice to say the developers aimed to make a “feel bad game,” so the story caters to those who enjoy monochrome rainbows and hornless unicorns.

Like the other mental health games I’ve reviewed, Lydia rarely ventures from its walking simulator roots. You will guide the girl between each scene and scroll through dialogue. Occasionally, you can choose what to say, and two set pieces almost play like a point-and-click adventure. The game ultimately wants to tell you a story, and your main responsibility is to listen, you petulant child.

What’s good?

Fortunately, that story will keep you emotionally invested. Lydia nails a bleak tone without drowning you in sob stories, instilling the same sense of festering dread that its main character experiences. The story is a morbid train wreck of misery, and watching the destruction is as enlightening as it is sobering.
The art direction manages to be unsettling without being overbearing. The scenes look like they’re taken from a children’s book, but the primary colors of this world are black, gray, and red. Characters jerk back and forth; shadows hide much of the environment, and a grainy film gives a sense of decay. The illustrations may recall childhood innocence, but the art serves as a constant reminder that things aren’t right.

What’s a double-edged sword?

You’ll finish the story in one hour or so. This allows you to enjoy the full game in one sitting, and you won’t be wading through any filler. Across its four chapters, Lydia clearly depicts how neglect can disrupt a child’s life, but it doesn’t dive into the characters, themselves. Given another thirty minutes or even an hour, the game could have presented a larger message on its themes.

What’s bad?

Lydia’s fantasy scenes come off as more cliché than symbolic. Teddy represents innocence, but he functions like an ineffective Gemini Cricket who narrates what we already know. We see certain adults as monsters, but this association is so obvious that we don’t need this illustrated. The game’s most poignant scenes focus only on reality, such as one section which finds Lydia in a park. By focusing on the mundane, we see exactly how this girl survives. The fantasy is just fluff and almost feels like it was added to make the game easier for players to stomach.
Your choices don’t matter. A walking simulator only benefits from player interaction when it actually impacts the gameplay. For Lydia, you can choose how the main character responds emotionally (with options like “Angry” or “Sad”), but you’ll only see a line or two of unique dialogue before its back to the script. When the choices are basically “Yes,” “Sure,” and “Righty-O, Daddy-O,” the game has incentivized button-mashing, not thoughtful story-telling.

What’s the verdict?

As the video game equivalent of flash fiction, Lydia delivers a poignant and profound story about distressing themes. It won’t make you feel good about yourself or humanity, but it will stick with you, make you think. Like many of its close cousins, Lydia struggles to be anything more than an interactive story, and given more meat, it could have done more with that story. Because of this, it’s not going to convert you to the genre, but if you do enjoy a dreary tale, Lydia is anti-soul food.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 7
Time Played: Approximately one hour
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Soul Searching, Night in the Woods

Scoring Policy

Aug

2020

Looking at Lydia: A Conversation about Abuse and Neglect

Meanwhile, this article is only slightly related

As I am writing this, I am in a Brakes Plus, waiting to get my oiled changed. Because this is for Player 2’s car, I had forgotten to bring a mask, which are all in my car. As a person who believes in wearing masks during this pandemic, I feel like an idiot. The sign on the door says we’re mandated to wear masks, further guilting me, justifiably.

However, here I am, still in the shop, maskless. If I had to return home to grab a mask, I would miss my appointment. I had called ahead, explaining my situation, and the kind owner told me they don’t “enforce” their mask policy. When I spoke with the receptionist, I apologized for not wearing a mask, stating I would check the auto store nearby to see if they sold them.

She looked at me sweetly and stated, “You don’t need to worry about that here.” She nor any other worker was wearing a mask. She spoke with the same patience and acceptance one would show to a foreigner who is still learning the customs of the country.

God bless American ignorance. If they had actually enforced their policy, they may have had spare masks. Otherwise, I would have lost my appointment. Instead, I am in a Brake’s Plus in which all the customers remove their masks as they wait to get their oil changed. The logical thing for me to do is to reschedule my appointment, but that would be an inconvenience. I’ve thought less of others think wearing a mask is inconvenient.

I don’t really get political on this site, nor do I want to. I’m also of the opinion that this isn’t a political issue but a health issue.

In this video, I talk of the importance of moving forward, being aware of our actions, and making change. Even in these awful times, I am hopeful humanity can rise above themselves and improve how we act. Even in this moment, I believe that.

But we are a stupid species. So fragile and so utterly stupid.

Mar

2020

A Discussion on Depression and Polygonal Wolf’s Drowning

To Validate and Vilify

Both this video and my walkthrough of Fractured Minds have felt like progress, even more than my “I Can Do It Better” series. My commentary has more focus, and I don’t feel the pressure to crack jokes. I have experimented more with video editing, even if all that I have done is add shadows to text and make transitions a little smoother.

My current dilemma relates to how I critique these video games which focus on mental health. Both Drowning and Fractured Minds don’t function well as traditional video games, and I was particularly ruthless in my review of Drowning. Polygonal Wolf and Emily Mitchell delivered very important messages, and I cannot emphasize enough how relevant their stories are as we raise awareness of mental illness. They serve as great discussion topics.

They’re also bad games. I would technically recommend Think of the Children over these two. That’s a damning statement.

“Important message” and “bad game” don’t usually mix in the same review. It creates confusing criticism. I’m essentially presenting a trophy to these developers and then shitting all over it. At the podium. In front of their family and friends.

You get the point. It feels cruel.

As with many dilemmas, I question how I would want others to treat my work. Back in college, I wrote a series of poems for a class, most addressing some form of my own struggles with mental illness. As an aspiring writer, I obviously wanted my peers and teachers to praise my work and offer their opinions. I think I also hoped someone would recognize the pain I had experienced and had said, “Wow, that’s tough. Thanks for sharing that.”

So, Polygonal Wolf and Emily Mitchell, I critique your work, and I hope I am not too petty or catty. I hope that I perhaps gave some constructive feedback. I also genuinely appreciate what you both have shared. I can only imagine your experiences have been tough, if your games are any indication of what you have been through. Thank you for sharing these stories with the world. That takes guts, and you should be proud of yourselves.

Now, I don’t suggest you take the trophy home. I made it a bit filthy.

Mar

2020

Drowning

In Shallow Waters

Would you watch a 35-minute slideshow of nature scenes? Would a story—conveyed only in unnarrated subtitles—make it more interesting? What if this story is about one teenager’s struggles with depression? Would you enjoy it then? Knowing that the story is intended to be straightforward, would you pay to see this entire show? If you said “yes” to everything, Drowning will fulfill your wildest dreams. Otherwise, you’re fine to ignore this game entirely.

The rest of this review is for those who want to read criticism for a game that was never really meant to be your “typical” game. With Drowning, developer Polygonal Wolf shares an account of mental illness, no more, no less. It engages gamers too little to be a traditional video game, and its personal yet simple narrative holds it back from delivering a deeper message on depression and the human condition. Unless you’re specifically looking for Drowning, you have little reason to buy Drowning.

What is it?

Drowning involves you dying as water fills your lungs and suffocates you. Drowning, conversely, follows a nameless protagonist as he struggles with European depression, which is like American depression but with misspelled “wourds” and fewer bald eagles. Over four years, our character’s symptoms gradually worsen, and his quality of life soon follows. Suicidal thoughts infect his inner dialogue, and the world around him becomes more isolated and sinister.

Your role in this journey is to walk along the beaten path before you. You will pass through a mountainous forest, along a beach, across a bridge, and other vistas which become less serene as the protagonist’s depression worsens. As you stroll, text is typed across the path, essentially creating thought bubbles representing our character’s inner monologue. You will walk at a lethargic pace, which possibly references the lethargy one feels when depressed. You can move slightly faster if you hold B, which makes looking around and walking an awkward ordeal, and this likely has nothing to do with depression.

Moving forward is all you will do as our narrator shares how his depression impacts his mood and academic life. Occasionally, you can wander off the path and grab a random collectible, but these collectibles only unlock achievements on other systems. There are four endings as well which require you to take hidden branching paths, and these amount to a few extra clips of dialogue. Otherwise, you will walk, as is the nature of the walking simulator.

What’s good?

Polygonal Wolf’s story provides a personal account of depression which can either inform the audience about mental illness or offer validation to those who experience depression. Without complicated metaphors or dramatic events, the narrative feels more realistic compared to other accounts of mental illness which try too hard to make you cry.

What’s bad?

Presentation and control issues limit immersion. The text is spaced haphazardly along the path, so you may have stretches without text or chunks where you have to stop and wait for the text to finish typing. Scenery constantly pops in as you walk, and levels end abruptly, flicking to a black screen without fading. Typos appear occasionally, and sometimes the environment makes the text difficult to read. The camera can be a bit sensitive, and holding onto the “move slightly faster” button becomes a chore.
Drowning describes depression as an unhealthy friend but struggles to stick to this metaphor or make sense of it. Throughout most of the game, our narrator refers to depression as “you,” an entity which convinces the narrator that he is a burden who should isolate himself from others. However, in the penultimate act, the two have a conversation, with “depression” claiming that it was trying to show the narrator that “there is nothing wrong with being different from everyone else.” It wasn’t “depression’s” fault; it was the narrator’s own thoughts all along! For some reason, the narrator drinks this Kool-Aid immediately, and we’re left to wonder if “depression” was really depression at all or was actually hope or a guardian angel or schizophrenia.
The environment and music clash with the content. I understand Polygonal Wolf was going for a laidback experience—complete with tinkling piano and trees everywhere—but the casual stroll does not reflect the character’s inner turmoil. You do visit a foggy bridge and an ominous house which fit the tone more closely, yet even these can’t shake the general feel of being on a relaxed guided tour.
Spoilers here, folks: The endings try to resolve everything and make grand statements when neither seem deserved. One ending finds our narrator completing suicide, having an epiphany in some afterlife nature trail, and then deciding to come back to life. Another ending stops the game midway with our character going to therapy, as if doing so suddenly resolves everything. The most confusing one involves the narrator deciding to remain dead, spending eternity in limbo with other faceless characters who died by suicide. I believe this ending is trying to pay respect to those who have completed suicide, but it comes so far out of left field that it is more fantastical than thought-provoking.
With its short runtime, Drowning can’t accomplish much. We follow four years in our character’s life, but we learn so little about him. We are given a few specifics, but this is not enough to give our narrator a full personality. As such, we can’t connect with him as deeply. The aforementioned endings act like acceptance speeches, rushing to a finish without saying anything. Drowning could drag with another hour of content, but it would also allow Polygonal Wolf to convey a fuller message.

What’s the verdict?

Like Fractured Minds, Drowning isn’t so much a video game about mental health as it is a story of mental health that happens to be programmed like a video game. I imagine those who work in the mental health field could use it to start a conversation on depression, and its message may be deeply validating for some players. I also bet the majority of Switch gamers will see Drowning more for its limitations than its merits. Mental health may still be relatively untouched in the video game world, yet this game has only scraped the surface. Unless you’re short on change, the Switch library offers deeper opportunities to explore mental illness while having fun.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 2.5
Time Played: Less than 1 hour
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Fractured Minds, Gone Home

Scoring Policy

Jan

2020

A Mental Health Walkthrough: Fractured Minds

A Message More Than a Game

Fractured Minds should not be reviewed as a traditional video game. Emily Mitchell designed the game by herself over the course of nine months for a BAFTA contest, and she intended to send a message rather than create the next Celeste or Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. However, my neuroticism will never forgive me if I do not review Fractured Minds and give it a score. As such, for my sake, I have developed a quick review here for my records. For a more relevant overview of the game, see the attached video.

What is it?

Fractured Minds offers six chapters, all focused on an element of mental illmess (specifically anxiety and depression). You take control of an unseen character who must solve simple puzzles in order to progress to the next chapter. These puzzles pose little challenge and exist largely to guide you in exploring each environment. A Slenderman-like monsters follows you throughout the story while a narrator points you in the right direction while criticizing most of your actions. The game can be completed in under 25 minutes, allowing you to reflect on the entire experience in one sitting.

What’s good?

The visuals are clean (albeit simplistic), and the soundtrack caters well to the overall tone of Fractured Minds. Most of the themes conveyed through the chapters (loneliness, stress, self-doubt) will resonate with almost everyone. Ms. Mitchell’s message at the end of the game is also heart-warming and motivational, and I imagine many will find comfort or encouragement from her words.

What could be improved?

The controls are imprecise, and the camera can be difficult to tame. Although neither affect the gameplay significantly, they are distracting. As a traditional game, Fractured Minds does not offer inventive puzzles or unique gameplay mechanics, so unless you buy into the mental health message, you will find little to entice you. More chapters would have also been welcome in addition to a more developed ending, allowing Ms. Mitchell to explore mental illness more in-depth.

What’s the verdict?

Above all else, Fractured Minds offers us a window into Ms. Mitchell’s experiences, one which allows us to relate to her or understand what mental illness can be. For those looking for a game like Night in the Woods or Gone Home, you may want to look elsewhere. For those who are unfamiliar with mental illness or who have begun to struggle with symptoms of depression and anxiety, the game may be a worthwhile download to begin one’s exploration into psychology, mental illness, and recovery.

Archives