Adventures With Anxiety is a free work of interactive fiction by Nicky Case. It’s about Sergeant Jack Magnum, elite chief of the lethal facepunch squad. Or it’s about nervousness, no matter.
You play because the nervousness. It’s a bit purple canine that adheres to its human like a raincoat, however detaches when it detects hazard it should warn them about. It’ll take about half an hour and it’s fairly good.
Writing about games and media on the whole about psychological well being is difficult even if you’ve skilled the topic, as a result of everybody’s at their very own level in experiencing it, discovering it, recovering from and accepting it. AWA didn’t maintain an incredible revelation for me, nevertheless it’s received a way of humour and a few beautiful moments, and I actually preferred what they did with the personified nervousness idea within the final chapter. Good canine.
Anxiety doesn’t manifest the identical means for everybody both, in fact, however that’s one thing the game acknowledges. Your human is doing issues – regular issues like consuming a sandwich, or checking the facetweets, which in fact as their nervousness you recognise as a possible menace. Exactly what kind the menace takes is as much as you, and also you job is to put on the human down till they heed your warnings. Should they reject a celebration invitation as a result of one thing dangerous may occur there? Or as a result of their crappy temper will solely deliver everybody else down, the thoughtless jerk.
Wear them down sufficient and also you “win” the spherical. You need to maintain them protected, see. It’s for the most effective. But in fact, your hectoring quickly takes its toll, and the sophisticated relationship between the 2 of you will get taken aside a bit.
Adventures With Anxiety is playable in browsers at the creator’s website. They’ve also made another games and toys for exploring ideas together with belief, segregation, and self-synchronisation in fireflies, which I’d advocate having a play with too.
