Free game about schizophrenia
Split Mind is a first-person story game about schizophrenia. You role-play as a person with a mental condition who's going through a psychotic break. The episode lasts for 4 days, which means you're going to have to perform a number of activities every day, such as getting up, washing your hands, and working on assignments. Over the course of the game, these things can become more difficult to do as psychosis progresses.
The main strategy in the game is to control your anxiety by breathing. Other than that, you're walking about and interacting with objects in the world to carry out a range of tasks. You'll even get a call from your mom every day that you need to talk to her to try to make her understand what you're going through. The game deals with the emotions, symptoms, and stigma of schizophrenia.
During the game, you tend to get hallucinations, see figures and hear sounds that you don't really know whether or not they are real, while at the same time being able to deal with frustrated and helpless emotions. In addition, you're trying to influence the main character in, for example, phone calls, where you're trying to get her to ask for help, but where she's still refusing to be misunderstood. The day finishes with you sliding down a flight of stairs, a metaphor for moving deeper into the reality of your depressive thoughts and feelings. It expresses them to the player in a tactile way, that they feel them on their own, to improve the awareness and understanding and, preferably, to relieve the stigma of the disease.
Split Mind is a courageous endeavor that culminates in a well-made game. Although it's interesting, it can also be terrifying to get into the world of schizophrenia. Anyone without schizophrenia can also understand the feelings and thoughts mentioned in the game, especially the conversation with the mother. It captures a classic critique of the illusion that it understands what is happening.
