Depression Quest is an online interactive game made by Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler. It is compatible with web browsers like Safari and Chrome. Although there is no age rating for Depression Quest, the game warns those who are “currently suffering from the illness and […] easily triggered” to be wary, and advises those who are suicidal to stop playing the game and seek help.
Users should know, as the game notes on its landing page, that Depression Quest is “not meant to be a fun or lighthearted experience.” In other words, the game is no Wii Sports or Candy Crush—it is a game that asks its players to remain critically engaged as it progresses through an at-times uncomfortable narrative. Thus, to play Depression Quest is, by nature of the game, to inherently “play like a feminist.”
There are a few reasons why Depression Quest is a feminist game that requires feminist engagement. The most obvious is its subversion of traditionally masculine, patriarchal expectations in gaming culture. Depression Quest is not a game that rewards skill or dominance over other players; the only “violence” it allows is the insidious, quotidian kind associated with mental illness, which—although violent, yes—is nothing like the gore or guts most typically associated with video games. Thus, the toxicities of masculinity—silence, hardness, victory—rail directly against the principles of Depression Quest—vulnerability, softness, inconclusiveness or loss.
One of the ways that Depression Quest makes room for these principles is in its narrative structure: a slow-paced, choose-your-own-ending format with embedded links (with information on the protagonist’s partner, workplace, etc.) for the player to explore. It forces the player to read, think, and slow down—like any feminist game, it is “conversational, personal, and relays narratives […with] particular potential for empathy building, allowing the player to think within different perspectives and experiences” (“Playing Like a Feminist”).
Notably, the narrative is extremely detailed and comprehensive. Some might find this boring or disengaging—an oft-repeated criticism of the game is that it is something to be read, not played, since the only player actions amidst a sea of text are choosing options at the bottom of each page, thus rendering the experience too mundane to be a real game. But whether or not Depression Quest is a “true game” isn’t as important to me as this frustrating slowness engendered by having to read and choose, and often among similar scenarios (should the protagonist go out, should they talk to someone, should they socializee). This pace, to me, embodies the quotidian, numbing dailiness of depression. Shira Chess notes that we have been conditioned to want something more than this from our stories: that “our cultural sense of narrative often hinges on the impression that stories need to be told linearly, reaching toward a singular climax.” Depression Quest denies its audience of that orgasmic structure, taking its players through the decisions of Thursday, and then Saturday, then Monday, then Thursday again in a perversion of narrative that Judith Roof would classify as “a never-ending narrative middle […] not necessarily escalating toward a climactic conclusion, but existing within the pleasure of delay” (“Play Like a Feminist”). In other words, the boringness of it all is the very mechanism that makes Depression Quest a stand apart from the heterosexist, masculine perspective so often found in games. It may not make for the most engaging game, to the extent that critics could call Depression Quest a non-game, but for those who stick with it, Depression Quest asks of them all the patience and empathy that would make them a “feminist player.”
Of course, Depression Quest isn’t perfect. For one, it limits players’ agency in a way that one might argue is inherently anti-feminist, eliminating players’ options in accordance with the protagonist’s depression and its debilitating effects. Although I don’t believe that this mechanism makes the game any less feminist, I do worry that this lack of agency is oversimplifying and stunting: as someone with clinical depression, I found myself questioning the idea that depressed individuals truly have less optionality in the world. This was especially true in cases in which all options but one were crossed out (see below), leaving me wondering whether literalizing the protagonist’s sense of helplessness as a lack of choice was the most empathetic way to depict them.
Generally speaking, I do think the game could have made more room for nuance. For example, in a scenario where the option of “enthusiastically socializing” is crossed out (see below), I wished that the option would have been left open, and that players who clicked it could see their protagonist try to socialize, but still feel some deep numbness afterward, or question themselves relentlessly throughout the night, or generally remain high-functioning but unsettled by their depressive nature. Of course, I understand that having crossed-out options is the simplest way to convey the paralyzing effects of the illness. However, each time the options narrowed, I worried that the game was conveying a no-way-back perspective—that after a certain point, if you’ve tunneled far down enough, there’s no getting your life back. The game must keep in mind that while intended to spread awareness amongst non-depressed players, it also has the twofold purpose of reassuring depressed players they are not alone, and must ultimately think about how the harms it may inadvertently inflict on the latter category.
Overall, Depression Quest ventures into strange and unfamiliar territory for most games—it’s slow, stuffed full of information, and in many ways frustrating. Perhaps its depiction of depression isn’t perfect, but it’s an honest attempt at bringing discussions of mental health into a space that might otherwise not tolerate them. At the end of the day, it’s a game that, in its own twisted way, falls into the “fantasy” aesthetic—a game that asks of its non-depressed audience to make-believe depression, and a game that asks empathy and compassion of players as a result. Depression Quest is a feminist game, and those who engage with it in good faith are taking on a feminist perspective.
