Getting UP

To navigate your own house is hard when depression takes over; when cooking and ordering remain challenging, eating chocolate becomes a survival strategy. You can cry, talk to objects, cook, go to the backyard, listen to the bird and even work if you manage to navigate in this mental predicament. 

This game is built in Inform. Its natural-language grammar and prose-like syntax make the tool exceptionally friendly, as evidenced by the screenshot of the source code:

The napkin is in the Bedroom. 'A single, crumpled napkin.' The mirror is a fixed-in-place thing in the Bedroom. The pillow is a supporter in the Bedroom. 'It is pink and full of feathers.' The player is on the pillow. The desk is a supporter in the Living Room. 'Piles of unfinished work shouting back at you.'

The player navigates this space through the act of reading. This mechanism, or materiality, allows for an immersion that rhymes with the subject of depression. The disorientation of a purely text-based world mimics the experience of navigating a novel of the self; it is an embodied perception of emotion. 

The game simulates the trajectory of a 'low' day: from the struggle of leaving the bed to the grounding effect of routine. Actions that are normally mundane, like the sensation of cold water on the face,  or just simply getting out to be in touch with the nature by looking at the sky, act as diversions from rumination, helping the player gather the strength for more restorative acts like cooking. By utilizing Inform 7 as a medium for immersive interaction, the narrative design mirrors the real-world timeline of how depression manifests and how healing begins.