Tag: isolation

The Elephant In The Room.

Posted on by in Uncategorized

As you may have guessed from the title, I want to talk about the COVID-19 Pandemic that is sweeping the world. Personally, I’ve been self-isolating for around two weeks now and haven’t left the house for 10 days. After my last trip to the pharmacy to pick up my medication, I started feeling a bit off. Then I developed a persistent cough and a slight fever. I think I’m almost back to full health. However, there are so many that are not as lucky.

The elderly, the disabled, the immunocompromised and the key workers on the front lines of this pandemic, are all so much more susceptible to this sickness. Whilst I sit on my bed writing this, thousands of people are out working to save lives, feed families and keep the communities that we have strived so hard to build, intact. If you are one of them, I salute you. Meanwhile, the rest of us are (hopefully) staying inside and dealing with the new problems that weeks of self-isolation have created.

In times like this, mental health pushes its way to the forefront of our minds. Although isolation is the best way to prevent the spread of the virus, it is a double-edged sword. Humans are inherently social creatures. The connections we form with those we love are critical to our mental wellbeing. Loneliness and isolation can be the two biggest triggers when it comes to a declining mental state.

You know that scene in films, where the lead character is all happy and cheerful until they are alone in their room – at which point they slide down the door and burst into tears? It’s not that far from the truth. In public we tend to put on a facade that we think those around us want to see. We’re scared of judgement, of hatred or cruelty. More than that, we’re scared that people won’t understand us.

That fear, that dread and anxiety? Most of the time, that goes away when you talk to your friends and family about it. You see the love they have for you on their faces, you hear it in their voices. Their support and loyalty are crystal clear. However, when all you have is some text on a screen or a phone call that only seems to last a few minutes, it becomes hard to prove that little nagging voice in your head wrong.

I’m lucky enough to be staying at my house in Cardiff with my housemates. I have an amazing community that supports me, and my parents regularly check up on me to ensure I haven’t fallen asleep under a pile of laundry like a cat. However, even with all this, that voice grows louder each day I spend in self-isolation. I can only imagine how much louder it would be if I was alone.

We’ve talked about the negative spiral multiple times in many different contexts. Yet again, that painful loop rears it’s head in this crisis. For each day that I feel ill, or unmotivated or sad, I am not productive. A lack of productivity makes me feel guilty. That guilt makes me question my own abilities and my self-worth. That leads to a lack of self-care and more days where I simply cannot face being productive. It just goes around and around, endlessly.

I don’t regret staying inside. I don’t regret self-isolating. By staying home, I am protecting people. My body is healthy enough to fit off this illness but not everyone is so lucky. By doing this, we are protecting the key workers. By doing this, I am protecting someone’s loved ones from falling ill. Who knows, maybe by staying home, I could have saved someone’s life.

The main issue I have had with staying home and isolated, is that I am scared I am losing myself. Not in a big way or anything. Just small pieces that get chipped off as the days go by. Bits of my identity. Be that my friendships, my love of theatre, the campaigns I run for my friends, the video games I play or the relationships I hold with my family. Sometimes, when you’re alone, you feel that you have no control, that it’s all slipping away.

That’s ok.

I’ll be ok.

And I hope you will too.

CaitlinRC.

Special Effect – Press to HONK

Posted on by in Real Life

One of the most powerful tools that game designers use to cause you fear or unease, is to take away something that you rely on. Be it your faithful animal companion, your magical abilities or even a sense, to have that ripped from you changes how you approach the rest of the game. Even if it is restored, you face the rest of it with that voice in your head, reminding you that what has happened before, could and maybe will, happen again. Especially in games that rely so heavily on quick responses or audio cues, everything becomes so much harder, as if the difficulty has been turned up to eleven without you knowing.

HONK.

Now, apply that to everyday life. Simple tasks are more difficult, there are some situations that are completely inaccessible to you and experiences that you will never get to have. Not fair is it? That’s what life can be like with a disability. Mental or physical, these disabilities can taint every part of our lives, constantly reminding you of its presence. For example, games majorly focused on strategy and cooperative play can be a massive struggle for those who are neurodivergent, particularly those on the autistic spectrum who struggle to pick up on social cues. Depending on the colour palette you use for your game, those who are colour blind may not be able to play. Even subtitles can make a massive difference in allowing people to enjoy a medium that a lot of us take for granted.

So, why am I bringing this up? What game could I possibly be talking about? Why am I asking various rhetorical questions to readers who can’t hear the sarcasm in my voice? Well, whilst I was at EGX, I got the chance to talk to the lovely Becky from Special Effect. If you haven’t heard of Special Effect, they’re a charity that builds custom gaming rigs for the physically disabled, both young and old, to enable them to enjoy the games we know and love. From creating joysticks that can be controlled with your chin, to having a big yellow button you can hit to make the goose honk, they will go above and beyond to improve the quality of life of those with disabilities. If that’s not selflessness, I don’t know what is.

Best Robot 11/10

I wanted to highlight Special Effect, here, on MindGames, because what they do is so important. The whole purpose of this site is to highlight how gaming and mental health are closely linked, how they can affect one another and improve our lives for the better. Yet, some people can’t access video games. They are cut off from one of the most powerful forms of media, all because of something they had no control over. Despite being dealt a crap hand in life, these people are all phenomenal. Kind, hilarious, bright and compassionate, they are the pinnacle of what humanity should be. So, it is our duty as the rest of humanity to nurture that potential, that hope and enjoyment in any way that we can.

One of Special Effect’s projects that really caught my eye was Bubble Busters. Their cute little bots have an inbuilt camera, microphone and speaker so that children who can’t physically attend school, can still be there in class, to keep up with their education and to let them have those childhood experiences we all remember. Inside jokes, hanging with their friends, getting any academic support they need, it is all possible with these little robots. Currently, the scheme is focused on children with leukaemia, who are forced to be at home for long periods of time due to their severely weakened immune system. This terrifying point in their life, is when they need their friends the most. That is what Special Effect is trying to accomplish and the impact they’ve had on kids lives already is astounding.

TLDR: They’re great, go support them.

As we discussed in my piece on Alien Isolation, loneliness can be a powerful thing when not dealt with. Sure, we all need a little me time now and then but being trapped alone with only the thoughts of your situation, is something that no one deserves. This extends beyond just those with the disability, but also to those around them. The family, friends and carers are also struggling. Having a few moments where they know everything is ok, that they don’t have to worry, can be the difference between a good day and a bad day. Be it being able to play a game with your child for the first time or just seeing them smile so wide it hurts your heart to look at, the impact is phenomenal.

Apologies that this piece is a lot shorter than usual. All I can say is that you should go investigate this amazing charity yourself. Here’s their website – https://www.specialeffect.org.uk/ .

Till next time,

CaitlinRC

Little Nightmares – If you wear a yellow raincoat, you’re probably evil:

Posted on by in Gaming

Following a recent announcement that a sequel to the popular horror game, Little Nightmares, is in production, I thought I’d look back at the original. Tarsier Studios, the developers of the game, is most well known for their work on the LittleBigPlanet games, so Little Nightmares was their first venture into the horror genre. Although a quite short game, it is a remarkable experience that focuses on telling a compelling story that will draw you in with intrigue and then terrify you a moment later. Although the actual gameplay is a bit clunky in places and can be a tad frustrating, the artistic storytelling and powerful imagery are well worth dealing with those little annoyances. If you’ve not had the chance to play the game and it’s DLC’s, I’d highly recommend doing so – preferably in a dark room with a friend to throw the controller at when you get too startled.

The game kicks off with the main character, Six, waking up in a dark room in her signature yellow raincoat. It quickly becomes obvious that she is on a ship of some kind, made clear by the floors rocking and the various cargo boxes sliding around. As you attempt to escape this strange location, you come across other children, who have clearly imprisoned in this place. They curl in their beds, terrified of what stalks the hallways and stare longingly at you through the bars, wishing they could be free like you. Soon, you meet their jailor – a long-armed creature called the Janitor, who captures the children and drags them away or traps them in cages.

Get away from me you long-armed freak or I’ll get my baseball bat.

Once you escape the Janitor (by crushing his arms in an elevator door), you come across the Chefs. This duo seems to be cooking up an elaborate feast, containing some… interesting ingredients. Any time you enter their line of sight, they try to kill you on the spot – chasing after you and adding you to their menu if you are too slow. From there, you come across a series of guests attending a feast. This feast is overseen by the Lady – the leader of this place you have found yourself trapped in. She seems to have some form of mystical powers, forcing you to use a mirror to reflect her abilities back at her, until she is weakened. However, once weakened, Six bites into the Lady’s neck and seemingly absorbs her powers – able to kill the guests at the feast as she walks past them, ominous black particles hovering around her.

One of the main themes of the game is hunger. From the crippling starvation that Six battles throughout the game, to the huge feast the guests are tucking into, the game really delves into the impact of greed and consumption on the world around us. The game was originally supposed to be called Greed before they settled on Little Nightmares. Throughout history, greed has been a blight on humanity. Both greed and gluttony are included in the nine circles of hell as outlined by Dante’s inferno, considered to be a great sin that we all must overcome in our lifetimes. The enemies that Six faces throughout her journey are embodiments of this concept, where the greed has consumed them and transformed them into monsters beyond our comprehension.

Remind me to never have this kind of relationship with my sibling.

Six, too, becomes a monster. We are forced to witness this throughout the course of the game. Her hunger forces her to desperate measures, such as scavenging for food from the kidnapped child and eating a live rat. However, it doesn’t end there. The temptation only grows, each step taking her closer and closer to the abyss. We all fall victim to this. We’ve all faced down the devil that is a temptation, sometimes managing to fight him off and other times being forced to give into it. You can’t always win. Mental health is the same. It’s a war, not a battle. Each time you step onto that battleground, you know that victory is not guaranteed. However, victory is not the objective we seek. It’s survival.

Alien Isolation and Little Nightmares share two common features – the feelings of claustrophobia and isolation. Against the monsters and the darkness, we are alone. The game designers portray this perfectly. Six is a small, terrified girl stuck in a horrific world and the world makes you feel that. From creaking pipes to haunting shadows and the distant screams of some distant horror, you constantly feel on edge but there’s nobody to turn to. The music, the ambiance and the design of each of the monsters you come across, are continually lingering at the back of your mind. You genuinely feel horrified, especially when you realize what Six is becoming.

The DLC’s of the game go into the story of the Lady a bit more, if you’re curious about her whole spooky deal.

Near the end of the game, Six staggers into a room and nearly collapses from starvation. A little Nome, one of the few creatures that aren’t trying to kill you in the world of Little Nightmares, offers you a sausage. Basically, every player will, at this moment, feel grateful and thankful to the cute little creature and walk towards it. However, Six doesn’t go for the sausage. She takes the Nome, that cute little creature we’ve all grown to love, and eats him. It’s a horrific event, that genuinely stuns you. I had to put the controller down for a moment and process what I had just witnessed. The thing is though, you understand why she did it. That desperation, hunger, greed, and isolation has been building up inside her all this time.

Little Nightmares is very much a game that you should experience by yourself in a dark room. So, I hope you’ll give it a go. After all, we’ve all had our own nightmares. Whether they were big or little, they stay with us all. Till next time,

CaitlinRC

Alien Isolation – In Space, Everyone Hears Me Scream

Posted on by in Gaming

First things first, I’m not good with horror. Be it movies or video games, I prefer to immediately switch it off and go find literally anything else to do. Most of my experience with horror franchises is through watching various lets plays on YouTube, or through hiding behind my friends as they play it. It’s not that I don’t enjoy horror, I love the paths that it can follow and the tropes it can delve into without drifting too far from the norm. For example, my interest in psychology means that games that make use of sanity mechanisms or more subtle horror are fascinating to me, I just struggle to play them all the way through.

Part of this is due to anxiety. Horror games and their tendency to rely on jump scares, does not mix well with a tendency to have a panic attack when I get flooded with too many stimuli. Some people don’t do well with gore or can get too overwhelmed by all the events that are unfolding, meaning that for a lot of people, the horror genre of media is often one they can’t experience properly. Which is a bit sad, since there’s so much talent and enjoyment out there to experience.

Personally, I’ve never played Alien Isolation. Partly because it never really came on my radar of games to play and partly because I’d watched a few clips of others playing it, screamed my head off and had to go calm down in another room. However, one day when I was very unwell and had nothing to do, I was watching YouTube and ended up binging the entirety of Cryaotic’s playthrough of the terrifying extra-terrestrial game. The horrific alien and weird androids aside, the atmosphere and storytelling of the game are astonishing. Sure, there’s a few pacing issues but no matter what section of the game you are in, the constant paranoia and fear of the alien never truly subsides. EVEN IF YOU’RE IN SPACE.

I would not vacation here, nice air ducts and tech facilities but Alien kept eating my friends and family, 1 Star! – Probably Ripley, Trivago.

However, the simplistic nature of this survival horror game is what makes it such a staple of horror. Being based off a popular horror franchise helped massively with its appeal but when even five minutes of gameplay can unsettle you so drastically, you know you’ve done something right. Whether it’s the scrawls on the walls of the space station, the footsteps of the alien as it draws closer to your hiding spot or the constant paranoia that stalks you around the ship, Alien Isolation orchestrates an atmosphere of horror that fills you with a sense of dread that haunts your every move.

The most powerful aspect of this game is in the title. Not the alien, though that thing is horrific. It is isolation. Although you do interact with various people throughout the game, 90% of your time exploring the space station’s various nooks and crannies are spent in solitude. In fact, most of the people you come across are more likely to put a bullet between your eyes than help you open a door. The only person you can trust in those lonesome corridors is yourself. Sometimes you can go nearly twenty minutes without any dialogue or cutscenes, just the player and Ripley, staring into the darkness and praying that nothing is staring back.

It is in these quiet moments where the horror reaches its peak. You are instantly more aware of every creak in the pipes, every panicked breath escaping Ripley’s chest and the lines between reality and the game’s fiction seem to blur. People often talk about how they get sucked into books and games like it’s unfolding right before their eyes and they are just swept along like a leaf in the raging rapids of a river. Sure, jumpscares can be effective in keeping the players on their toes but the fear quickly fades. Meanwhile, with that constant sense of dread and each sound effect sending a shiver down your spine will stay with you long after the dramatic sequence has ended. The best games have a profound impact on you, and I think I speak for many people when I say, I don’t like walking under air ducts anymore (DON’T EAT ME I DON’T TASTE NICE I SWEAR).

I think the Alien needs to see a doctor, that’s not a healthy amount of drool. Or hygienic. GROSS

Humans are inherently social creatures. Even introverts like myself, need company from time to time, especially in distressing situations. Sometimes just letting someone know that they aren’t alone can be the greatest comfort you can give. So, the isolation that the game is so fond of, is probably the most powerful tool it has at its disposal. Sure, the big murderous alien is powerful but like many game mechanics, you can end up being more irritated with it than scared.

The alien is a known quantity. Once you’ve died to it a few times, you understand how it works and what you can do to avoid it. Loneliness and the darkness of the space station, however, are unknowns and this can be far more terrifying. We always talk about the dangers of the unknown, those gaps in our knowledge that could prove catastrophic. Our imagination runs wild with all the possibilities, something those with a mental health condition can understand better than most, as our mind becomes our greatest enemy. All the horrors in the shadows that you envisage, could just be products of your terrified brain, as it struggles to comprehend the events unfolding around it.

The first time you meet the alien, when it’s tail curls towards you and you’re certain it’s the end, is breathtakingly terrifying. The following sections are filled with panicked breathing, praying that it doesn’t see you even though you’re making an obscene amount of noise and sighs of relief when you see a save station. The combination of suspense, fear and paranoia culminates in a heart-stopping sequence that I think anyone who has played the game will remember far too vividly for their liking. This is the best part of Alien Isolation. It is you, in isolation, with an alien. (Wow Caitlin, it’s the title of the game, you’re so witty)

On a scale of 1-10, that’s a big old NOPE NOPE NOPE.

Despite all this marvellous suspense and paranoia that Alien Isolation builds up, it does fall flat in places. Once you’ve built up all this suspense, you need to do something with it. It’s a bit like building a house but instead of stopping once it’s complete, you add a conservatory. Then a pool. Then a third floor. Then a moat and drawbridge. At some point, you need to make use of all that you have been building, otherwise, there was no point in building it in the first place. Alien Isolation has some phenomenal moments of horror and primal fear, but it could’ve had so much more if the game flowed just a bit more smoothly.

Overall, I think Alien Isolation is one of those horror games that proves that it could terrify you with a tin can and some rice if it tried hard enough. You don’t need immense amounts of gore or zombies to traumatise your players, just have them stalked by a murderous, basically invincible creature! I would be excited to sit and play this some time, but I need to find a friend who is brave enough to join me first. I would also have to play it at midday in the sunlight with all the doors and windows locked and probably a bat next to me to protect myself.

Could I get some personal space? Please? NO, I DIDN’T MEAN THROW ME INTO SPACE!

What game would you like me to talk about next? I’m thinking we stick with the theme of isolation and loneliness in games and talk about Firewatch! If you’ve got any suggestions, drop them in the comments, leave a like on this article and follow my site if you want email notifications for whenever I publish a new piece! (Also follow me @OurMindGames on Twitter for all the behind the scenes goodies)

Stay away from air ducts,

CaitlinRC.