Update Two Hundred and Twenty-Three: 8 September 2018
Indygo
1.5 hours, 17 of 17 achievements
4/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Indygo is a game about being a guy who keeps himself in his room because of his crippling depression. It opens by saying that every person’s battle with depression is different, and that this game’s reflection of depression might not necessarily match up with your own experience. That was absolutely an understatement.
I was hoping the game would offer anything other than the standard ‘I hate myself and I’m worthless everything is black and grey I’m a huge drain on my loved ones’ perspective that a lot of media portraying people with depression has, but it did not. The voice acting - that of the main character, his girlfriend, and the doctor - was awful, not helped by the stilted writing. There’s a LOT of writing in the game - beyond the really black and white ‘choice’ system, the way you influence the game is by choosing your responses to letters your girlfriend and doctor write you. It’s cripplingly inelegant, and it steals inspiration from Depression Quest by showing you all the possibilities on how to respond, but not allowing you to pick ones the MC doesn’t feel like writing.
The different endings - all of which involve replaying the rather short game over and over again - are predicated by whether you choose to focus outside your depression or whether you wallow in it. These choices range from… okay but obvious to outright laughable. Apparently, listening to classical music and/or Joy Division is a negative, and so is drawing a wolf instead of a doe (misspelled as ‘roe’ in the game, a really big oversight). Those kinds of choices are seen as big impacts to your journey, but huge aspects of recovery are nowhere to be found. Nowhere in the game do you get the opportunity to, you know, make efforts to actually fucking pick up after yourself, or make your own food, or take any responsibility for yourself - that’s your girlfriend’s job.
My initial, uncharitable gut instinct is that I really don’t think the people who made this game actually experienced depression, but I’m probably being too mean. I don’t know how common the type I had/have is - where my major symptoms were ahedonia and chronic exhaustion; I didn’t even have the energy to feel sad, let alone hate myself - but it had nearly nothing to do with whatever was portrayed in the game here. The only thing that rang true was the observation that things are so, so different after you get yourself out of the mud, no matter how you do it, and that the difference is unimaginable. I guess, at least, that’s a good thing for that to be true, no matter what.
Next up: RNGesus says it’s time to try again!
See you soon!
But isn’t that what depression often is about? Not being able to take control? It’s a hell of a difficult topic. As you said, most people experience it way different probably – at least compared to let’s say a simple cough. Anyway, I’m not feeling competent enough to start a deeper discussion about that, even less so in my not-mothertongue.
Looking at your review and the store page I get the feeling the game tries to tackle the topic by giving you depression as well though. First hand experience, so to speak. Sorry, couldn’t resist making a joke about it…
i mean, yeah, but it’s also a big part of recovery. Recovering from depression isn’t just ‘wee I don’t hate myself anymore! I can feel happy now!’, it’s breaking all the unhealthy patterns you fell into, including not taking care of yourself and/our outsourcing that labor onto your loved ones. Since the game’s whole choice system is about you making choices to seek a way out of or succumb to your depression, and this is a huge aspect they missed.
That was one of my most embarrassing parts of my depression, feeling completely useless and incapable of making a phone call for my doctor’s appointments or doing my dishes, and it was embarrassing being a grown ass adult who had to have my mother and girlfriend do those things for me. It was getting that capability back that was one of the first big steps to get myself out of that hole, and feel like I WAS a competent, worthwhile human being that wasn’t a burden. Seeing that aspect in the game would have brought a shit ton of reality to it.
I definitely get where you’re coming from, though, and I’m glad to have a little bit of a talk about it.
Yeah, they really hammer home the ‘be careful! this game might make you WAY SAD!!!’ … but the game really isn’t elegant, complex, or nuanced enough to really accomplish that. n_n;;
(I edited my review to add a line before the part you quoted, to make the direction I’m tackling it more clear)
Well, maybe I didn’t get the goal of the game right. When I read above line I immediately thought to myself ‘what a clever way to show what depression does to you’ when in reality it was probably not even intended to do that. But since the game seems to want to offer a route where you escape your struggles (or at least try to), I get why you didn’t like it. That said, 1.5 hours is probably way to short to really explore this topic in depth anyway.
While you apparently had some pretty tough times behind you, it seems you are feeling way better now, that is good to hear :) And while we should not dwell in the past, we can still look back and be happy about the things we managed to improve since then – may they be little or not so little. I hope you continue on your path of feeling well again!
That’s all fair points.
Aw, Vito, thank you. I feel very firmly recovered - I hope I stay that way, and that you similarly feel free, light, happy and capable.