Everything is going to be OK
“Everything is going to be OK” is a digital interactive story that incorporates dark humor to showcase struggles of anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems, as well as social issues that are present in reality. It has a very particular style that utilizes fantasy themes and incorporates bright colors and pixelated art. This art style could be used as a therapeutic strategy to distract players from the seriousness of the topics it discusses and as a representation of comfort and peace when facing chaos or feeling overwhelmed.
“Every walk is a chance to assimilate the new into the known, the fundamental precursor to that new perspective on the world that adventure games strive to induce.” (Reed et al. 116). “Everything is going to be OK” uses a nonlinear narrative and portrayal of agency, which makes it different from other interactive games. The game has different boxes that “assimilate the new into the known” and incorporate unique art styles with known themes ranging from social critiques to anxiety, mental health, and depression. Unlike Depression Quest, “Everything is Going to be OK” has no direct choices or options to choose from but instead a series of boxes, each showing a different scene or clip. These scenes appear as fragments and can be profound and disturbing. Still, they uncover mental health struggles and showcase how a person’s thoughts can become distressed when dealing with anxiety and how society or mental health can affect someone. The way that these fragments blur the lines between traditional ideas of authority and influence also impacts the agency of the narrative.
