Educating Anxiety
Platforms: PC
Educating Anxiety is a serious game that conveys the experiences felt by those suffering from anxiety disorders. Its core purpose is to depict the symptoms accurately, whilst demonstrating a practical grounding technique that can be used during moments of high anxiety.
In this sense, its intention is to be both impactful and educative, serving as a useful portrayal of mental health issues for both sufferers and non-sufferers alike.
Responsibilities:
Research
Level Design
Documentation (GDD)
Gameplay Programming
I was responsible for designing the mechanics, levels and aesthetics from the ground up. The main aspects I spent time on were the level design and iterating the grounding mechanics, but the project also required a great deal of gameplay programming and C# scripting, especially in regards to the repeating room.
Trailer
Process
Design Process
The core loop is based on abstracting different symptoms and grounding techniques into levels and interactive mechanics. The main aspect of designing the levels was ensuring that they embodied the nature of the symptoms.
This involved ideating a theme for each, planning out level structures, assessing the environmental factors needed to represent the symptoms, and then fine tuning the level flow based on playtesting.
The repeating environment is a representation of the thought loops that are often prevelant with generalised anxiety. The game logic is based on non-Euclidean geometry, so that the player can continuously pass through the same room, without it ever ending. This level in particular required a lot of iteration and was reworked from the initial designs, to heighten the feeling of repetition.
The crucial part of the project was designing the grounding mechanics, which demonstrate the process of carrying out a real-life grounding technique. They are gamified abstractions of established techniques, using the nature of the medium to teach players how they can manage moments of high anxiety.
The main design concern I had was making sure that the practical aspect of the technique translated over to the in-game mechanic. The rhythm of square breathing for instance is expressed through positioned inputs on the keyboard.
Generalised Anxiety
Social Anxiety
Technical Process
From a programming perspective the most difficult part of the project was the recursive portals used to achieve the ‘repeating room’ environment.
It was achieved by mapping the screen co-ordinates to a shader, which were then used to project convincing depth in the portals render texture. Another challenge was ensuring that the transition between portals was undetectable by the player, which required a great deal of debugging to remove any visual clipping.
The visual recursion shown through the portals achieves the 'non-Euclidean' effect desired, to mimic the logic of a never ending environment.
Screenshots
