by Roshani Shrestha
All five Twine stories in the Depression & Anxiety group created a lack of agency for the player in some way. The technique of manipulating agency at different points of each story forms a representation of the varying degrees to which mental illness can make one feel helpless. This technique is mostly carried out through variations in the choice system, but there are also other ways that this is carried out.
In Depression Quest, a lack of agency is present in the choice system. There are usually choices that are red and crossed out, which a player cannot click. These unclickable choices are ones that you often want to choose but can’t because of your mental state at the moment. This creates a sense of helplessness, which matches how someone with depression could feel. However, these unclickable choices go away if the player goes on a path that benefits them and alleviates their depression. As the lack of agency lifts, so does that feeling of helplessness.
In Anhedonia, the lack of agency is present in the lack of choices. The narrative mainly goes down a linear path, with a few options here and there to slightly change the text. This creates a similar feeling of helplessness but also monotony, especially because of the repetitive nature of some of it. For example, “dismiss it, repress it, discount it” is a series of phrases that result from clicking the word before “it” several times. A lack of agency also presents itself when there are a bunch of “tic”s (accompanied by a ticking sound) that appear slowly. The player cannot proceed until it ends and the last “tic” is displayed in red. This creates a sense of slowness and monotony that often accompanies depression.
The Twine story nineteen by Elizabeth Sampat also presents its lack of agency through a lack of choices. The player’s only option is what link to click on a certain page. These links always lead to different parts of Sampat’s story and with no real choices, we can only watch helplessly as her story unfolds. Depending on the path of links one takes, a different “ending” arises. Sampat doesn’t consider them to be endings and I don’t either, especially with how open-ended they feel. I feel that there is one “ending” that increases agency and, therefore, hope and a possibility for help along with it. This ending is the one that involves proving depression wrong when it says you have no friends. She ends this off by saying “If you can’t think of anyone else, think of me.” The phrase “think of me” is linked to her email so that people struggling with depression can contact her if they need to.
I’m Fine is similar to nineteen in that there is one main story that we are expected to traverse with a lack of options. While there are actually some choices in this story, they all basically lead to the same sequence of events, culminating in the same ending. This ending is very open-ended and doesn’t really leave anything resolved. At the end, you are said to be considering taking steps to move forward, be calmer, and rely on your friends more. Although it seems to be a pretty hopeful ending, the fact that it ends so abruptly and without allowing you to choose something that gets you to a better point in your life hints that the struggle isn’t over. There will continue to be points at which you lack agency and, as a result, start to feel helpless. I personally can’t tell if this is a hopeful ending or a pessimistic one. Or if it’s a mixture of the two as a way of being more in tune with realism.
Mom Is Home also lacks agency in its choice system. There aren’t a lot of choices presented to the player, who plays as Jenni. However, when there are, there is always only one viable option. For example, the first choice you get is a response to your mom, who scolds you for not folding the laundry. Each “option” only leads to the same result—an acknowledgement that you don’t actually say anything to your mom and instead go to fold the laundry. In the second choice, you are presented with options of seeking support and, possibly, a way of feeling better. All of the choices but the last one, which is to “release stress by going for a walk,” prompt you to go back and choose again because they wouldn’t be helpful to you. For example, if you choose “call boyfriend,” it’ll tell you that “you don’t have a boyfriend.” Cleo mentioned during our discussion that these options felt like common things people say to those who are depressed. These types of suggestions can feel generic and not applicable to the person who is struggling. This creates an example of how helplessness when trying to talk to people about your struggles is translated into a lack of agency in choices of a game. If you struggle with mental illness, it can often feel like you’re talking to a brick wall when you’re telling someone about your problems. They can say things that don’t feel applicable to you or wouldn’t work out for you. This is because they often don’t know what it’s like in your head and how the mental illness eats away at you and is harder than it seems to combat. The only ending in this game is a single sentence: “You feel hurt and miserable and alone.” This is followed by “END” and there are no more links. I realize now that this ending sentence is the only one that is written with proper capitalization and punctuation, which is absent in other parts of the story. This effectively creates an ending that feels definitive, which results in a feeling of helplessness through the feeling that there is nothing you can do to change it.
As someone who struggles with mental illness myself, I could definitely relate to this collection of Twine games. The way it portrayed these sorts of struggles often emphasized a helpless feeling due to the illusion of having limited options. It shows how hard it is to actually get help, stick to it, and believe it. I think, sometimes, there is a tendency to oversimplify things. For example, some of us can say things like “just go to therapy,” “just meditate,” or “just try medication” when it isn’t really that simple. Even when going to therapy and/or being on medication, you have to put in tons of work to make change possible. Nothing is easy and I think these games provide some good understanding on what it’s like to live with particular mental disorders, which can help foster empathy surrounding the subject of mental health in general.
Intermittent Mechanism 