Look, a journal!

(Hello, LJ/DW. I don't know if anyone's actually still here, but sometimes I need a place to write things that are a bit more long and thoughtful than any of the... less ghost-town-like platforms that I'm on allow. And so here I am.)

Depression Quest is a multiple-choice work of interactive fiction (written in Twine, for those of you for whom that means something) that tries to accurately portray the experience of having clinical depression. Don't let the somewhat flippant-sounding title fool you; it is in fact quite serious. The game goes through a series of vignettes in the life of a twenty-something depression sufferer, allowing the player to make various choices in an attempt to drag themselves out of the pit of horrible gloom and become (hopefully) a functional human being. However, often the "best" choice is struck out and, though the player can see it, they cannot actually select it; depending on the character's level of depression, other decent-to-good choices may be struck out as well, and the player may be left with only bad or unhelpful options.

According to the authors, the two goals of the game are as follows:

"[F]irstly, we want to illustrate as clearly as possible what depression is like, so that it may be better understood by people without depression. Hopefully this can be something to spread awareness and fight against the social stigma and misunderstandings that depression sufferers face. Secondly, our hope is that in presenting as real a simulation of depression as possible, other sufferers will come to know that they aren't alone, and hopefully derive some measure of comfort from that."

( So, how well does it accomplish these goals? )

If you've talked to me much in the past, say, two years, you may already be aware of my love affair with interactive fiction. I certainly talk about it enough. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that it is my fandom right now. And so, like any obsessive fangirl who likes something obscure, I have been wanting for a while to make a post to proselytize to you tell you about the thing I love in the hopes that some of you might be interested too. This is that post.

Part I: What The Hell Is Interactive Fiction, Anyway?

Most of you are, I think, old enough and nerdy enough to know what text adventures are. They're those games from the old pre-graphics days where the game world is described in, well, text, and you play by typing more words at it, and then the game tells you that you can't get ye flask and you scream and smash your head against the keyboard a few times.

Actual commercial text adventures have not really been a thing since the advent of graphical games, but there is a small and devoted community still doing freeware text games. There are lots of reasons for this! Partly it's because they're so easy to make: they don't require any music, art, animation, voice acting, or anything like that. They can be done entirely by one person who can (at least sort of) write and (at least sort of) code. Partly it's because there are things that just work better in text format. Really getting inside a character's head and seeing things the way they see things, for one--getting their thoughts, noticing what they notice, getting sensory information that's not visual. There's a (quite compelling, IMO) game that consists entirely of walking around a gallery and looking at paintings through the eyes of four different characters. I have a hard time imagining that working in any other medium. There's also a whole subgenre of games that center on language and wordplay--like this one, whose central puzzle/gameplay conceit revolves around inferring meaning from syntax, and which uses that conceit to effectively portray an alien world containing a lot of concepts that don't seem to completely map onto anything we're familiar with.

So I really do believe that there's still a niche for text games—and not just as a nostalgia thing for people who come from the 80s.

A point on terminology: "Text adventures" : "interactive fiction" :: "comics" : "graphic novels", which is to say that the former is the original term which non-fans tend to be familiar with but which certain fans will get terribly snotty about if you use it, while the latter is the more recent term that fans like but pretty much no one else uses/understands. I use them pretty interchangeably, but will mostly be referring to "IF" from here on out because it's shorter.

( Part II: Interpreters )
( Part III: How To Play )
( Part IV: Game Recommendations )
( Appendix: Useful Links )

And now I've rambled on quite long enough. If by some strange chance you do go forth and try out any of these games, let me know what you think! I am also happy to answer questions (or hurl more recommendations your way upon request).