Immersion of Mental Health Relationship
As the player, you control a teenage boy named Sunny and his dream world alter-ego Omor that is trying to get over the death of his older sister, Mari. However, at night Sunny enters a dream world that was created to repress his memories of his sister and his involvement in her death. Because of this, Sunny is extremely depressed and suicidal the entire game. The setting takes place in a small town called Faraway Town where Sunny plays with his friends Kel, Hero, and Aubrey. The game is separated into four main parts, and the purpose of the game is for the player to find out what happened to Sunny and his friends. There are multiple endings but the one that is focused on is the bad ending where Sunny is absorbed by his alter ego and returns to the white space (dream world) to have fun with his friends, but in reality Sunny actually commits suicide by jumping off of a hospital balcony.
The player interacts with the game by playing as Sunny in this 2D indie turn based RPG, where the player fights off monsters and progresses through the game in a linear style fashion. Through Sunny's declining mental state and reoccurring dream-like battle environments, the player can visualize how Sunny is disconnecting from himself and reality due to his depression stemmed from his sister's death. As a result, Sunny is becoming two separate entities instead of one mind which parallels the internal mental struggles that individuals with mental disorders have on a day to day basis.
Please Knock on My Door is a 2017 indie game that was developed by Levall Games AB and published by the same company on the platform Steam.
Please Knock on My Door is story-drive where the player is given control over a person that is suffering from severe depression and social anxiety. The objective of the game is to attempt to help them to get through work and reach out to their friends and family which desperately trying to survive from themselves. There are 3 endings to the game but I will be focusing on the bad ending as the purpose of this game was to raise awareness for individuals suffering from depression and I feel as if the bad-ending has the biggest connection to it since the player attempts suicide.
The player is subjected to the daily monotonous tasks that us humans do without even second thinking them. The player interacts in the game by attempting to message friends, keep the place clean, do chores, do work, write notes and read the dialogue in order to understand the person's feelings through clicking. Through the lonely bleak atmosphere and the disparity through tone, the player becomes quick to realize the irony in Please Knock on My Door as it is a cry for help. The person's thoughts and work space are continuously changing and parallel the mind of the person which demonstrates the relationship that the person has with himself and how those with mental health issues generally have a hard time accepting and existing with themselves.