• Depression Quest

 

This game was my favorite out of all the ones I played, and somewhat surprisingly, it is also the game I feel I performed best in. Navigating the story the creator put together was both engaging and emotionally moving, even though the gameplay itself is fairly simple. What made it so effective was how the choices available to you are limited or even removed at times, which immediately puts you in a different mindset than most games and forces you to slow down and pay attention to how the character is feeling rather than what you want to do.

Although I have thankfully never dealt with depression myself, at least to my knowledge, the game offered a powerful window into the inner world of someone who does. The constant lack of energy and motivation, always feeling tired, avoiding social situations, and the ongoing cycle of self-loathing completely reshaped how I understood depression. Instead of seeing it as just sadness, the game showed it as something much more exhausting and overwhelming, where even basic tasks or “good” options can feel impossible. That perspective shift is what made the experience so impactful for me. I was completely engrossed in the story and constantly tried to have Alex (the person you play as) break out of his self destructive cycle as in my opinion, the best possible medicine is change.

 

If I had to think of an improvement for the game I would suggest introducing setbacks or unfortunate events to the game to see how they affect people with depression. The game follows an overall upward trend with little to no setbacks or challenges for Alex to face aside from his depression. Alex had a supportive girlfriend, a supportive family (I loved his older brother in the story) and coworkers and acquaintances that tried to get close to him on multiple occasions and none of them ever gave up on him and were always very supportive (aside from his mom who wasn’t as supportive but was just ignorant). I found myself anticipating some tragedy or setback to learn how Alex would react or if my progress would be set back but it never came. Maybe adding a scenario where things don’t turn out the ideal way could raise the game to even greater heights.

 

  • Skills Practice: A Home Visit 

 

This game is about a home visit by a mental health specialist to a victim of domestic abuse, and it stood out to me mainly because of how it was presented. The game uses a series of videos with actors who react directly to the choices you make, which I really enjoyed. Instead of reading text or imagining how people might respond, you actually see it play out. Since therapy and mental health support rely heavily on body language, facial expressions, and tone, the videos felt essential rather than just an added feature. Small details like discomfort, hesitation, or relief were clearly visible and made each decision feel more serious and realistic.

I also found the experience very eye-opening because my exposure to domestic abuse before this was mostly through movies and social media, which tend to oversimplify or dramatize the issue. Seeing the situation approached from a professional’s point of view made me realize how complex and delicate these interactions really are. The game showed how easily the wrong wording or approach could damage trust, and how much patience and awareness are required in these situations. Every time you mess up and choose the wrong option you feel the instantaneous gut punch that comes with making the abuse victim uncomfortable or losing trust in you. Overall, it gave me a more grounded and human understanding of the topic, rather than the surface-level perspective I was used to.

One critique I have regarding the dialogue that genuinely frustrated me was how the text choices did not always reflect what the medical professional says in the video. I have 2 examples that genuinely had me pulling my hair out in frustration. Firstly, one of the options at the start of the game when the victim opens up about the abuse she is facing is to show her the resources that are available to help her. While I understand that this is the wrong option as it instantly overwhelms the victim, upon choosing this option the medical professional that you play as goes on a minute long rant shoving tons and tons of paperwork in the victim’s face. I get that this is meant to emphasize how you chose the wrong option but it takes away from the control you have over the game because that is not at all what was intended or implied by that dialogue option. Another example was a dialogue option listed as “discuss sleep patterns” where I intended to gather more information about the victim thinking it was relevant. Upon picking this option, the medical professional proceeds to ask “have you tried going to sleep using music?” which, in my opinion, is one of the dumbest and most insensitive questions to ask during the mental health check of an abuse victim and was very obviously not what I intended.

 

  • Project Honduras

 

Project Honduras felt very different from the other two games, both in tone and in how emotionally invested I became. Out of all the games I played, this one felt the most like a traditional “game” rather than an interactive narrative or lived experience. You manage volunteers, choose which tasks to prioritize, and race against time as the sun moves across the sky, which creates a clear sense of structure and progression. While this made it engaging on a mechanical level, I found it less moving and I was noticeably less emotionally invested compared to the domestic abuse scenario and Depression Quest, which focused much more on personal, internal experiences.

That being said, there were elements of Project Honduras that I really enjoyed. The sound design was especially well done and helped bring the environment to life, making the world feel active rather than static. I also appreciated the way time was tracked visually through the sun, as it added pressure without relying on a typical countdown timer. These systems reinforced the idea that decisions have trade-offs and that you cannot do everything, which fits well with the theme of disaster preparedness. However, one major weakness for me was the lack of reflection after each level. Once a disaster scenario ended, the game did not explain which priorities were most important or why certain choices were more effective than others. Including a short explanation or debrief after each disaster would have strengthened the learning aspect of the game and helped connect gameplay decisions to real-world disaster response priorities.

 

  • Fake it to make it

 

Fake it to make it was a very in-depth game and, like Project Honduras, it felt much more “gamey” compared to the more story-driven experiences. This was one of the most fun games to play, mainly because its systems are clearly defined and explored in detail. You are constantly making decisions, tracking numbers, and reacting to feedback, which made the experience feel active and engaging rather than passive. The depth of the mechanics made it easy to stay invested, even when the subject matter itself is deliberately uncomfortable.

What I especially liked was how the game puts you directly in the role of the source of fake news instead of positioning you as someone trying to stop it. Being able to choose one of two political parties to conspire with made the experience feel very involved in American politics, even as someone observing it from the outside. At the same time, the game is exaggerated enough that it feels playful and almost satirical, which makes it entertaining while still clearly criticizing the systems it portrays. You are encouraged to exploit outrage, bias, and misinformation, and seeing how effective these tactics are is both funny and unsettling.

My main critique is the tutorial. While the game itself is deep and well designed, the onboarding felt weak. I was suddenly dropped into the experience with several pages of fake news articles to choose from, without a clear sense of what the optimal strategy was or how to build credibility effectively for such an unethical news site. A more informative tutorial or guided early phase would have helped me better understand how my choices influenced long-term success, especially given how complex and interconnected the systems are.

 

  • Losing a Parent

 

This game really resonated with me because I lost my father in 2021 when I was 16, so the topic immediately felt personal. I strongly related to the beginning, especially the way it showed the family’s state and the general confusion that comes after a loss. That emotional limbo, where nothing feels normal but life still keeps moving, was very familiar to me.

I also connected with the developer’s fear of being pitied or of people’s attitudes changing. Personally, I never found it helpful to hide it and instead felt that getting it out of the way early was easier. Interestingly, when people sometimes forget that my father passed away, it doesn’t make me sad, but rather reassures me that I’m not seen as weaker or defined by it. Toward the end, the game shifted more toward how the loss affected relationships and marriage, which I couldn’t fully resonate with since the author’s experience is very different from mine. That said, this felt less like a flaw and more like a reminder that grief is deeply personal and varies a lot from one person to another.

 

  • The Accessibility Challenge

 

This game was very short and simple, basically just a quiz about accessibility in presentations, but it still managed to make me think. I found myself noticing things I usually take for granted, like font sizes, color choices, and whether slides would make sense to someone who sees or hears differently. The gameplay itself didn’t require much skill, but the way it nudged me to consider other people’s perspectives made it surprisingly engaging.

Even though it wasn’t emotionally intense like some of the other games, it gave me a small but meaningful insight: accessibility isn’t just about following rules, it’s about imagining how someone else experiences your work. I realized that what seems obvious to me might be confusing or even impossible for someone else to access.

If I had to suggest one improvement, it would be to show more concrete consequences for the choices you make. Right now it’s mostly hypothetical, so seeing how a poorly designed slide could actually affect someone’s understanding might make the game stick even more.

 

  • VizMotion (in class game)

 

This was a game played in class where there were different cards with different emotions on them and cards with a prompt that you are meant to relate that emotion to. For example, you draw a card with “relaxed” on it and the prompt is “where you feel this emotion the most” to which your answer would be “home”. 

 

As you progress through the prompts get more and more imaginative like “what fruit makes you feel *blank*” which sort of forces you to get creative and transform different fruits into emotions and see which one fits the card you drew. The main goal of this game was to open up our minds to metaphors so we could think of some for AI and, honestly, I think it worked! Playing this game got the creative side of my brain working after it has been asleep for so long.

 

If I had to critique this game, all I’d have to say is that I wish there were more prompts with more ideas because we were able to finish all the prompts within 10 minutes.

 

  • BBC Syrian Refugees

 

BBC syrian refugees is the first digital game I played for this course and it set the tone for my understanding of this course’s definition of a game. This was definitely a new experience for me as the last time I played a game like that (with the simple choice making and simple UI with the clear intent of being educational) was in middle school I believe so it brought me back to that type of learning/ The game itself follows a syrian family trying to escape and the struggles and impossible choices they make along the way. I must reiterate that when I say “impossible choices I mean the most difficult and gut wrenching choices I have ever seen in a game. It felt like at some point the game was forcing the player to choose how they wanted to die (spoiler warning: I drowned). 

 

I personally felt that this game did everything it set out to do, it forces you to live through the refugees’ eyes in a way I haven’t experienced before and the story flows pretty well. The one improvement I would suggest would be the visuals as I believe they could’ve set the scene even better with more of them. Or maybe they could’ve included some real life images at the end of the game for that last twist of the knife to fully make sure you never forget the game contents and understand what’s going on in syria.

 

  • Spent

 

This game starts off with a challenge: “Urban Ministries of Durham serves over 6,000 people every year. But you’d never need help, right? Prove it”. While I understand that the challenge here isn’t an actual test of skill I still took it upon myself to get the best possible outcome. The game’s premise is the simple budgeting that all people do on a monthly basis, except for a struggling family just barely staying afloat where every mistake or every bill could spell bankruptcy. While I was able to make it through the month with barely $96 to spare, in order to get this outcome I had to drive off from a car accident, miss my child’s play and charge my friends and neighbors when they came to stay over as they were struggling as well. All of which are things I am not proud of but there is no room for pride in the face of poverty. In my opinion the current world economic systems fail to provide us with the basic needs that every human is entitled to which are food, water and shelter. The fact that we still live in a world where people live hungry on the streets and haven’t figured out a solution for that but know how to split the atom shows just how careless nations have been regarding this issue.

 

This game was a blast to play, however, I believe it failed to get its point across directly. While playing the game I was too focused on the numbers and the budgeting to ever stop and empathize with the people living in these conditions. I do believe part of it was me being blinded by the challenge presented at the start but also in a way the game’s entertainment value takes away from the message. I found myself skimming through the random facts they sprinkled in to explain statistics about what impoverished people have to go through to stay afloat. The improvement I would like to suggest that I believe would’ve benefitted me and anybody else who thinks like me would be to force the player to slow down. The game has a smooth UI and flows very easily and is satisfying to click through which makes you go even faster which leads to you maybe missing the message. The goal of slowing down is to give the player more time to think and imagine themselves in this situation and think to themselves about how for some people this is real life.