Depression Quest
For my Critical Play, I played Depression Quest, an interactive (non)fiction web-hosted game about living with depression. This game was created by Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler. The target audience is likely people of at least 16 or so who can related to having a job, adult relationships, and high levels of agency and autonomy. I could also see this game being applicable to people slightly younger who resonate with knowing they need to get up and do schoolwork but still getting sucked into tv and doom scrolling. It mentioned this game is not for people active struggling with depression or suicidal ideation, so I think this game is a good fit for people who have no experience with depression. This game made me wonder if I have low-grade depression.
This game is interesting in that it doesn’t have a solid game resolution. There isn’t a way to “win” this game. The game will end at some point, but the final state depends on choices you make throughout the game. It is single player and you are kind of playing against yourself throughout the game, although you do struggle at different times with keeping certain stakeholders (family, friends, boss, Alex) happy. I did feel this game ended a bit abruptly, and I might have chosen actions differently if I knew how close I was to the end, although that may be intentional and part of the mental health narrative.
Playing this game as a feminist, I noticed feminist themes in this game such as having strong levels of agency and making thoughtful decisions part of the narrative-progressing mechanisms. I liked how early on, they made it super ambiguous what gender you and your partner were. They refer to you as a mid-twenties human, and with the androgynous significant other name of Alex, it didn’t pigeonhole you into being male-identifying or queer right out of the gate. This reminded me of the reading and how feminist games look to decenter men and patriarchal structures. I thought the game could have extended this a bit more. It would have been easy to refer to the partner as “they” throughout the narrative. Perhaps this was intentional to make players question their assumptions about what someone who is depressed presents as, but I think it would have been a stronger and more impactful design choice to not assigns genders. I could see this extended to interactions with the brother as well, describing them as an older sibling looking to buy a house with their partner. I like how we don’t know what attic’s gender is, and I thought it would have better embedded players in the narrative to not know the gender of the therapist either.
Access to mental health support is a strong feminist ideal, so I liked the messages conveyed in this game. It was interesting to me how I started with many choices, but as my “depression” worsened, fewer choices became an option, leading me to many circumstances were I have only one choice. Similar to the mechanic mentioned in the reading of having a rewind button as a mechanic for forced reflection, I thought having crossed out and un-clickable options was a strong mechanic to reinforce the narrative that depression is not laziness. It made it clear that depression sometimes leaves you with very few options.
I played the game multiple times, and it was interesting to see how small changes (accepting a doctor’s phone number, saying yes to getting a cat, having honest conversations) can culminate in vastly different outcomes. I think this game’s narrative could be enhanced by incorporating other socio-economic factors. Maybe when the therapist offers medication have an option that says “You can’t afford it. Make an excuse.”
I think the status boxes at the bottom do a good job of narrative progression by highlighting the fact that progress is non-linear. You don’t start seeing a therapist and get magically fixed.
If I were the game designer for this game, I would let the user self-select their gender, cultural background, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status and present the game through those lenses. People could play from different perspectives and see how different identities affect the way they approach mental health. I would bring in designers with lived experiences in these areas to make it authentic and honor the stories and struggles they faces. I would also add well-being bars to the side so players could get a more concrete idea of how actions affect them. I think a visual impact on sleep duration and sleep quality that affects them the following day could highlight the impact of staying up late watching tv or drinking has on you up to several days later.
