Depression Quest

Zoe Quinn - 2013 - PC

Depression Quest is a game that makes me really excited about where the medium of video games is now and direction it's going in the future. Depression Quest is an interactive educational simulation about living with depression. It attempts to use game mechanics to communicate to the player what living with depression feels like. The mechanics are simple and certainly nothing revolutionary. But what makes me excited about this game is that to me it serves as an indicator that the medium of video games is maturing to a point where games can start to cover serious topics like this and tell deeply personal stories.

The game of Depression Quest is basically a text-only roleplaying experience that repeatedly presents you with a scenario and then offers you several choices of how to deal with a the presented scenario. For instance, your in-game girlfriend may call you up and ask you if you'd like to attend a birthday party. You're then given several choices like "attend" or "politely decline" or "say you're not feeling well" or something like that. The catch is that while you can see all of the options, the ones you can actually select are almost always limited based on how depressed you're feeling. There's a few blurbs of text near the bottom of the screen which essentially serve as your "depression meter" and as you get better or worse, more or fewer options are available to you. As far as a simulation of depression goes, it was pretty effective. Sometimes you can see the option you'd really like to choose, but you just can't pick it, which is kind of frustrating.

The game states that its authors have personally struggled with depression before which makes Depression Quest's story feel very authentic. Now I'm not sure if it was the quality of the writing or how personal it felt, but I was alarmed at how many times the writing really struck a chord and resonated with me. There were many times where I was like "Oh wow, I think that to myself all the time". Again, I've never struggled with the serious, deep kind of depression this game is about, but those thoughts I had were a testament to how relatable the writing is even to someone who doesn't know much about the subject matter.

Summary:
As someone who has never personally dealt with depression before, this game was a very educational tool for me and I'm very glad that this game exists. I hope it helps to raise awareness of what exactly depression is and how the people suffering from it can feel limited in their lives. I also hope that this can influence more developers to make more really personal experiences like this game. It's probably less than an hour long, but it's totally free and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a personal game or anyone who would like to try to roleplay what it's like to live life with depression