Now play with your emotions
Gaming Get in touch with your feelings — new games are designed to teach empathy and improve mental health, says Ben Travis
AS ANYONE who’s watched Six Feet Under will tell you, the right story can change the way you think about life and death. But TV shows, books and films aren’t the only art forms that can help us work through difficult emotions — video games are becoming an increasingly expressive medium for players to engage with darker emotions too.
Apart of Me, developed by social enterprise Bounce Works, is a mobile game designed to help young people deal with the death of someone close to them. Nearing completion and currently funding extra features in an Indiegogo campaign, the project is an role-playing game which sees the player avatar, a grieving child, arrive on an island where a wise Oracle helps them process their feelings.
“The overarching narrative of the hero’s journey is interesting when applied to a young person’s grief,” says Bounce Works co-founder Louis Weinstock, a child psychotherapist who worked in a bereavement support service at a Hackney hospice. “They can get to a point where they can turn their suffering into a sort of resilience for other people.”
Game quests — arriving as messages in bottles — are designed to “encourage human connection” in the real world, with players prompted to learn more about the person they’ve lost, collect photos of them, and learn mindfulness techniques in a calming waterfall.
The creation of Apart of Me involved the contributions of teenagers Weinstock worked with. “We’ve been paralleling the hero’s journey in real life with the young people working on the game,” he says. “They’ve benefited hugely from designing it and thinking about what they struggled with, and how to turn that wisdom into something to help others.”
A game doesn’t have to be designed with the purpose of helping people grieve to have that effect. Life is Strange is a mainstream drama game series from Square Enix, focused on fleshed-out characters experiencing loss, death and grief, but also vibrant life.
The first game told the story of photography student Max, who develops time-altering powers and makes life-or-death choices in an attempt to save her childhood friend Chloe from being killed by a fellow classmate. Prequel series Life is Strange: Before the Storm launched its first chapter in August and focuses on Chloe as she grieves for her father and strikes up a life-affirming relationship with friend Rachel.
“The process of being a teenager is the death of being a child,” says Life is Strange: Before the Storm lead writer Zak Garriss of the game’s