Tag: story

Depression – That Little Voice:

Posted on by in Real Life

TW – Depression and Suicide.

A young girl shuts the door on her friend with a big smile plastered across her face. As soon as the lock clicks into place, the smile vanishes and overwhelming sadness swims in her eyes. She slumps down, barely able to keep herself upright as sobs begin to wrack her body and tears spill down her cheeks. The camera pans away, the piano instrumental swelling to an emotional crescendo. This is what the films showcase depression as, a dramatic display of emotion and sorrow. Needless to say, that’s a load of bollocks.

Yes, this devastating mental health condition can manifest itself in full emotional breakdowns. Yes, there are some moments where I just want to cry in my room until the sun sinks below the horizon. However, it is so much more than that. It isn’t something that is magically fixed by falling in love with some handsome boy who wipes away your tears. There isn’t a “cure”. It isn’t something you can prevent just by “cheering up” or stopping being sad.

Let me explain a bit more. Depression is more than just feeling sad. It is more than the emotional breakdowns where you can do nothing but cry. It’s days where you don’t see the purpose of getting out of bed or doing anything productive, because what possible worth could you contribute to the world? It is moments where you feel guilty for taking time to yourself, where you feel that you aren’t good enough, that your work is terrible, that you are worthless.

Depression is a mood disorder, caused by an inbalance of neurotransmitters in your brain. A low level of serotonin, is associated with a low mood, lack of sleep, lack of appetite, interest in usually enjoyable activities and much more. There are many different factors that can influence whether you develop a mental illness such as depression – there’s a major genetic component. For example, there’s a big history of mental illness in my family, which significantly raised the risk of how likely it was for my sister and I to develop one.

I was officially diagnosed with anxiety and depression around three years ago. Around a year and a half later, I was given the additional diagnosis of PTS (Post Traumatic Stress). Despite all this, I’ve been experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression for nearly seven years now. Looking back on my teenage years, those moments of anxiety and self-loathing weren’t just teen angst or exam stress. All these people would tell me to calm down, to relax, to stop beating myself up over every tiny mistake. I’d feel guilty for not being able to take their advice, for wallowing in self-pity and guilt.

Now, there are many different types of treatment for depression. These treatments are not a permanent fix for the mood disorder, they are merely ways to cope and manage the symptoms. I’ve tried Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to improve my self-esteem, counselling to try and process the traumatic events in my life, various self-help resources and ground techniques for when I get overstimulated and start to panic. However, therapy isn’t the answer for everyone. In my case, I need to take anti-depressants to keep my mood in check. I couldn’t focus on the therapy or the techniques that I was being taught because I just couldn’t see the point in it. I didn’t see a good reason for wasting my therapist’s time with my petty problems.

Throughout these years, I’ve had so many ups and downs that if you drew my journey on a map, it’d look like a mountain range that even the most ardent of explorers would dread to climb. Some of those downs have been a major dark pit that I didn’t think I’d get out of. I’ve struggled with my self-esteem, dealt with thoughts of whether I should end my own life. It’s terrifying. Genuinely terrifying. You feel like you’ve fallen so far down that nobody could ever find you to help pull you out. I was lucky enough to know an amazing guy at university, who would always make me laugh when I saw him at brunch. Despite me not being a “party” student, he still made an effort to include me and get to know me. Sadly, he lost his battle with depression and took his own life back in late 2018. I still miss him.

Mental health conditions are so much more than just “attitude” or “moodiness”, they are conditions that those who suffer from them will have to carry for the rest of their lives. It becomes a part of who you are, influences the decisions you make and the paths you choose to follow. I know for a fact that I’ve missed out on so many opportunities because I thought I wasn’t good enough or smart enough or worthy of that chance. Heck, even now I still don’t.

It’s ok to ask for help. One in four people will suffer from a mental health condition in their lifetime. You aren’t weird, you aren’t broken or wrong. You are deserving of love and support as much as the next person. Please remember that.

Look out for one another, be that hand in the darkness.

CaitlinRC.

PREY – This Article Is A Mimic:

Posted on by in Gaming

In the eternal time-vortex that is the COVID-19 lockdown and pandemic, I realised that I had never finished my playthrough of the game PREY. Considering I’d had a tonne of ideas for articles about the spooky space adventure, I decided it was time to remedy that. However, when loading up my save, I realised that I had left my Morgan Yu in a corridor with a Nightmare and no real way out. So, like any normal person, I decided to watch an in-depth lets-play and scream quietly into my pillow at every jumpscare. I’ll go back and officially finish the game myself one day, maybe as a Halloween stream if that is something that you’d be interested in.

One of the main features of PREY is the enemy type called the Mimic. As its name suggests, it mimics objects in its surroundings and blends in, until you get too close, at which point it tries to eat your face. Personally, my coffee cup becoming sentient and trying to consume the flesh from my bones is on my list of “Things I Never Want to Happen to Me Ever on The Face of The Planet”. Then again, that list isn’t particularly long (yet). Mimic’s can take on the form of nearly any object, forcing you to constantly scan your surroundings for anything that is out of place. That additional coffee cup? Mimic. That oddly angled chair? Mimic. That person trying to kill you? Not a mimic, just a jerk.

…I love my coffee but am not a fan of getting my face consumed.

You are Morgan Yu, a tester of devices known as “Neuromods”, which allow the user to gain new abilities and skills instantly, though it does involve inserting a needle into your eye which is scarier than most of the game’s monsters.  These abilities fall under two categories – Human, such as improved medicine, attack power and hacking ability, or Alien – which gives you access to the Typhon’s abilities like telekinesis, morphing and telepathy. This wide skillset allows the player to choose how they wish to approach each scenario they face, be it with stealth or an overpowered shotgun. My default approach is to try and be as stealthy as possible, then get discovered and panic until the enemies are all dead or I am dead.

Despite the outer-space surroundings and endless swarm of jerks, mimics, and phantoms, it is the atmosphere that makes PREY such a fascinating game. From the moment you start it up, you are consistently shown not to believe your eyes. Your apartment is a simulated environment, that you have been living in for three years, following the same daily routine (a la Groundhog Day). Three years of your memories have been wiped out from the use of Neuromods, and the entirety of Talos One has been overrun with the Typhoon menace. Every shadow seems to contain another monstrosity and you can’t trust what you see or hear.

You’ve heard of tall, dark and handsome. Welcome to massive, horrifying and demonic.

This look into what it’s like to not trust your own senses, gives us all a slightly glimpse into what people with Psychosis deal with every single day. Every individual’s experience with the mental illness is different but there are three main symptoms associated with a psychotic episode:

  1. Hallucinations
  2. Delusions
  3. Confused and Disturbed Thoughts

The mimic’s ability to imitate the world around you, forces you to distrust everyone and everything in sight. Your senses are heightened, every shadow is an enemy lying in wait and every unexplored corridor seems too dangerous to risk exploring. You are surrounded by death and chaos, followed by long stretches of eerie silence where every clang of metal or hiss of air causes you to jump ten feet in the air out of panic. It’s a remarkable combination of panic, distrust, and paranoia, lumped in with a healthy dose of genuine fear.

Nope, nope, nope, nope nope, nope nope NOPE

When the Nightmare shows up for the first time after entering the Arboretum, you catch a glimpse of your greatest threat yet. Sure, the mimics and phantoms all want to kill you, but their existence doesn’t revolve around it. The Nightmare, however, only has one sole purpose in life – to hunt you down and tear you limb from limb. It really should get a better hobby, I’m just saying. Try fishing or something.

These things are fast, strong, and capable of swiping your head off with one hit. No matter how powered up you are, these things are more than able to take you out. Those Neuromods I mentioned earlier? Yeah, the more of the “Alien” ones that you use, the more the Nightmare will show up. It’s not worth fighting these guys. It’s a waste of ammo for a one-time reward, with a high mortality rate.

GET BACK SATAN

Encountering your first nightmare, you’d probably assume that it’s just a set-piece and that the abomination will probably turn up as a boss fight near the end of the game. A logical assumption but an incorrect one. These things will stalk you across Talos One, destroying everything and everyone that is in their way. To quote the in-game description – “If all else fails, run.”

Another aspect of PREY that I absolutely MUST mention, is it’s ending. The grand finale of the game has you facing down an enormous Typhon called an Apex, which is threatening to consume the entirety of Talos One. You have the choice of trying to escape, neutralising the Typhon, or setting off the station’s self-destruct sequence and sacrificing yourself. Your actions earlier on in the game, will dictate whether you survive your stay on Talos One.

…Please don’t eat me

Throughout the game, when you encounter other humans, you don’t have to kill them. You are provided with plenty of non-lethal options to deal with your non-supernatural foes. After all, everyone on Talos One is also fighting back against the Typhons. They just don’t want their coffee cup to eat them, is that too much to ask? Each person you spare or kill, whether you choose to free or rescue those in danger, as well as the ending you choose – will be laid out in front of you in a post-credit scene.

The whole game was an experiment. Morgan Yu, your player character, is a captured Typhon entity with Morgan’s memories implanted into it. Every part of the storyline that you played through, was a memory and a test to see whether Typhon’s were capable of developing empathy and human emotions. Dependent on your choices throughout the game, the experiment is either deemed a success or a failure. If you fail, then you die.

Is anyone else getting a James Bond villain from Alex?

However, if you succeed, then Alex (Morgan’s brother) reveals something to you. The Typhons have already invaded Earth. The efforts you went through to contain the Typhon threat, were for nothing. However, by showing that you as a Typhon can develop empathy and emotions, proves that peace could be brokered between the remaining members of humanity and the invading Typhons. It is up to you to choose whether you want to be that bridge between the groups as a hybrid of the two.

We all know that I love games that have consequences for your actions. It forces you to care a bit more about the world you are exploring and the character’s you interact with. That fear and paranoia that you experience throughout the game becomes tenfold when you realise that your anxious trigger finger could be the end of a genuinely good person’s life.

Anyways, apologies that this article took so bloody long! I made it a bit longer to make up for the delay, so hopefully it was all that you were hoping for. If you have other games that you’d like to see my take on (eventually), leave them in the comments or message me on Twitter (@OurMindGames).

CaitlinRC.

Röki and Eldest Souls – United Label Are One To Watch:

Posted on by in Gaming

Whilst I was at EGX, I got the chance to chat to the folks at United Label and try out their two games – Röki and Eldest Souls. First, I want to say a massive thank you to all the team I chatted to, who were a delight! They were all clearly passionate about their creations and the origins behind them, which only made me more excited to try out their games. It’s clear that a massive amount of care and detail has been put into their works and I highly recommend you go check them out, they’re deserving of all the love and attention you can give them. However, Röki and Eldest Souls are two very different games. Much like oil and water, they’re two creations that you wouldn’t expect to find under the same umbrella. So, lets talk about them and why they caught my eye.

Look at Tove’s cute little hat and backpack! LOOK AT IT!

First up, let’s talk about Röki. Made by Tom and Alex from Polygon Treehouse, it is their first venture into the indie gaming community, and it looks incredible. At its core, it is a game about kindness and courage. Based on Scandinavian folklore, you follow Tove, a young girl on a journey to save her family and confront her past. The world is full of monsters, but they are not inherently evil. They are merely creatures, like you and I. Pain, sadness, fear, happiness and humour – they experience these emotions as we do. Taking a step away from the traditional “must stab monsters” view that a lot of games based on exploring a world tend to follow. To move forward in the game, you help them solve their problems and in turn they’ll help you solve yours.

Inspired by the Monkey Island series and games like Day of The Tentacle, Röki has a strong narrative that is supported by various complex puzzles that encourage you to explore the expansive world. Straight off the bat, you will be astounded by the sheer beauty of the game. The art style makes a strong use of colour and silhouette to create a living, breathing world that you feel a genuine part of. This is added to by the excellent sound design. Wind whistles through the trees, you hear leaves rustle and the crunch of the fallen snow beneath Tove’s feet. You hear birds calling and squirrels chittering, the monsters grunt and mutter to themselves as you run past. When you stop to think about it, each piece of the world is just as important and alive as the main character is.

Can confirm, I spent several minutes running around in the snow like the child at heart I am.

Röki comes across at first glance, as a cute little indie romp through a forest. However, the moment you boot it up and immerse yourself in the world, its clearly so much more than that. You are merely a piece on the chessboard, moving your way across to the other side and tackling whatever problems cross your path. The story of Tove, of her journey to find her family and face the demons of her past, is one of many tales being told in this fairy tale forest. The kindly troll by the bridge, the oracles in the trees and the abandoned woodsman’s house, they all have their own story to tell. Why is the hut abandoned? What were those buried in the graves like when they were alive? How did the troll come to be injured anyways?

The puzzles are not inherently hard. They require you to think outside the box a bit more than most games in this style. However, the game provides you with hints if you ever get stuck in the form of the oracles. Inside a few key locations, are the wise oracles whom you can consult for assistance in your journey. Although cryptic, they will provide you with hints and suggestions as to what you need to achieve in order to move forward – e.g. who you need to help or which area you need to explore further to find that key item. Röki will be one of those games that are inherently calming and peaceful, especially to those of us who suffer from anxiety. Standing by the sea or in a forest, I feel at peace. The world keeps turning, the environment around me lives on whilst I stand still, unmoving. It makes sense, when a lot of the world doesn’t seem to.

LOOK HOW GORGEOUS THIS GAME IS! SERIOUSLY!!

In contrast, Eldest Souls falls on the opposite end of the spectrum. Taking a leaf from the Souls series, it follows the lone warrior as he attempts to slay the imprisoned Old Gods before the remnants of humanity are completely wiped out from the world. A combination of exploration and boss fights, Eldest Souls sees you explore a crumbling ruin known as The Citadel, encountering NPC’s, mysteries and the Old God’s themselves. These encounters are not for the fainthearted and the chances of you making it out alive are very slim. An RPG at its core, it allows you to decide how you wish to approach its challenges and how much of the hidden lore of the desolated world you wish to uncover.

Made by Fallen Flag Studios, a group of developers that started out as students, Eldest Souls puts a unique spin on the “souls” combat style. Each boss you come across is a completely unique fight, requiring you to rethink how you approach each combat encounter. Once you defeat a boss, you gain their unique “ability”. Say for example, a boss used a spin attack against you. Once beaten, you could gain that skill and apply it to unlock new areas of the Citadel, tackle previously impossible bosses or just make life a bit easier for you. Apart from the initial tutorial boss, you have control over the order in which you tackle each boss. Struggling on one in particular? Then go try another one and come back later. Obviously, there will be a few bosses that need to be beaten in order to progress the story further but the flexibility of it is brilliant.

I have to admit this is a very cool logo.

Eldest Soul’s art style is in the form of pixel art, which gives a slightly lighter note to the bleak nature of the world. An incredible amount of detail has gone into each sprite, including the telegraphing of their attacks and how they respond to you. The world around you, although decimated, feels like it is slowly beginning to live again. The artists have added tiny details that when you notice them, make all the difference. For example, during the small section that I tried out, it opened on a boat. The boat rocked from side to side as the waves flowed against it, the rain falling as if a great storm was approaching. It felt like an average day in Cardiff, I’m not going to lie. From particle effects in their teleportation system which lets you choose to exit a boss fight and come back later with ease, to the crumbling of obstacles as you smash through them, it’s a breath-taking game to experience.

When in doubt, stab it and run away at full pelt.

One key bit that I really want to highlight is the music. I had the chance to chat with the composer of the game’s soundtrack and honestly, even if this kind of game isn’t your thing, just get the soundtrack. It’s hauntingly beautiful, matching the tone of the areas you venture through. As you step into a boss arena, the music builds in tension, exploding into a heart racing anthem to your struggle against the Old Gods and their dark creations. Although I never actually beat the boss (because I’m terrible at Souls games), I can say with confidence that the music helped me get into the mindset to defeat it. It gives off a “David vs Goliath” feel that I think is missing from a lot of games, where you are up against an insurmountable foe, but you believe that you can defeat it.

The Citadel is an intruiging place to explore, where you aren’t sure what is around the corner but are excited to find out.

I think that both Röki and Eldest Souls are games to keep an eye on. Sure, there are more major releases over the next year that everyone is keen on, such as Cyberpunk or the Avengers game, but I have always thought that the indie gaming scene is where the true stars shine and United Label has not let me down on that front. I can’t wait to see their finished products and to follow what they do in future and I hope you’ll give them a shot too.

If you enjoyed this article, give it a like and comment below any games or topics you’d like me to cover in future! I’ve got a lot of post-EGX content for you all, with Monday’s piece being all about the amazing charity – Special Effect. Till next time,

CaitlinRC.

Dragon Quest Builders – We Built This City on Monster Bits:

Posted on by in Gaming

First things first – if you didn’t sing the title of this article, I’m disappointed. Second, since Dragon Quest Builders 2 was released last month, I’m going to talk about the original instead because I refuse to follow the bandwagon and also I have basically no knowledge of the sequel, whilst I spent a ridiculous number of hours playing the original. So, if I was to describe the Dragon Quest Builder games, the most appropriate description would be where Minecraft, Dragon Quest, and Harvest Moon had a weird love child that nobody expected to be as good as it was. Although I’ve only actually played one Dragon Quest game from the main series, it’s a game that I frequently come back to and replay, so when I spotted this spinoff in the Nintendo Switch store, I was intrigued.

The game splits itself across several “chapters” that have you traveling across the realm, helping fight off monsters and rebuilding the society that has been consumed by darkness. The evil Dragon Lord has conquered the world and taken away the resident’s ability to build and create. This means that it is up to you, the hero, to rebuild their cities, dispel the darkness and eventually defeat the Dragon Lord once and for all. This mostly results in you doing various tasks for the villagers, painstakingly recreating blueprints and hoarding every resource that you can get your hands on. The characters you help are remarkably likable (except Rollo, screw that guy) so the tasks feel less like fetch quests and more as if you are actively improving these people’s lives.

ROLLO, OVER MY DEAD BODY WILL YOU BE MAYOR.

The game has a good balance of resource gathering, construction, and combat. Alongside the main questline, each island has a series of optional objectives available to you. Some of them involve battling dragons, others have you helping a friendly mob build a garden. Although they are not revealed to you until you complete the chapter for the first time, it adds a nice layer of replayability to each set of islands, as well as ensuring you pay more attention to the next chapter, now that you know roughly what to look for. Some of the combat encounters are tougher than others but running away like a coward is always an option (except boss fights). One of the first things the game teaches you is how to craft health items and food, which ensures that you don’t die a horrible death in the wilderness.

Like any Dragon Quest game, you can equip armor, weapons, and tools to help you along your way, although in this case, you must craft them using gathered materials at specific stations. For example, you couldn’t smelt metal on a workbench, so you better get to building that furnace! The further into the game you get, the more complex the stations you’ll require to complete your tasks – don’t fret though, the game never gives you more than you can handle and you can always view exactly what you need for the recipe. Rarer resources can be crafted into stronger armor or different weapons that can be used to take down specific enemies, really nothing you haven’t seen before.

I’m just saying, this would all go a lot faster if people would chip in.

Dragon Quest Builders is a remarkably calming game, an experience that you can actively lose yourself in for hours at a time. I didn’t quite realize it until I looked up from my Switch once to realize that it was 2 am and I’d been playing for four hours straight. I am particularly fond of building up my little town in each chapter to perfection. Depending on what you build in the town, you gain “points” and your town can level up. It doesn’t have a major impact on your game but there is something very satisfactory about having well-constructed rooms and defenses to keep out the various critters that like to attack you in droves. Plus, it does make completing the main storyline easier as you can skip any “level up the town quests” and finding space to build a new room is a lot simpler.

Like many games in the “building” genre, it has a creative mode. This allows you to build and travel to the various islands you’ve visited during the story, as well as craft all the items and rooms you unlocked. The more of the story and the side quests you complete, the more is available to you to play around within the creative mode, which really encourages you to get the most out of each world. Now, I’m no master builder like those who build to-scale recreations of various world landmarks in Minecraft, but I do enjoy putting my own twist on more simplistic creations such as a house or a garden. This game allows me to do that, alongside stabbing the occasional monster and blowing up various bits of the landscapes with my homemade bombs. Although I’ve never fully completed the game itself, I have sunk a lot of time into it, and I’m genuinely excited to get my hands on the sequel.

One day I will be able to build something this good.

Any game that brings that element of calmness to you is a good one in my opinion. Often sections in games can be stressful and tense, requiring you to step away for a while to calm yourself and fully appreciate what you just experienced. I love those moments but sometimes, I just want a game that I can throw myself into and just relax with, rather than stressing about the anxieties in the virtual world as well as my real one. I think Dragon Quest Builders fits that, with its cute art style and enjoyable gameplay mechanics making it a worthwhile experience, especially if you have a Switch. It’s the perfect game for on the go and doesn’t require much thought to be put into enjoying it, so you can play for a bit on the train and walk away without worrying about forgetting crucial clues or plot points.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this little piece on Dragon Quest Builders. Up next, the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise and how the lore behind it brought together a community. Remember to follow the site, like the posts and comment below any suggestions – or tweet them to me @OurMindGames

Until next time,

CaitlinRC