Play Depression Quest

This is a free text based experience that just has you clicking hyperlinks as you would a webpage. I can't really call it a game since I don't think the point is to entertain you. It was originally a website and this is just the web-kit version of the site put on Steam. I'm not sure it will help anyone with depression, so much as it lets people with depression think, no you are not alone (the player, not the character 'You'). Other people feel the way you do.

The basic gameplay in Depression Quest is that you will read through things (You is the player character that you will play) and then make a choice of what to do (click a hyperlink).

It sets a story and gives you background information on things. You have everything going for you, a significant other, a circle of friends, a day job. Your girlfriend, Alex is supportive of who you are and understands you. That's more than some people have in real life, but it illustrates you can have everything and yet depression still affects you. At least the characters in the game are supportive of you and not questioning why you have depression or does depression exist or are you just lazy? Its almost like everyone accepts you, but you are the one with a problem that doesn't accept yourself. Its all inward in this experience. You make enough money to support yourself, so money isn't the issue, but money is never a discussion or a reason to the depression, its just all you.

Below each life choice, Depression Quest bluntly tells you that you are not in therapy, nor taking medication for depression, you are just dealing with it. The 'happy' or 'logical' choices are always crossed out forcing you to select the sad choices such as, 'watch TV, work on a project (Depression Quest) or crawl into bed.'

The big thing that I take away from this is everyone around you (the player character) really cares about you. It also seems like there's no way out. Maybe there would be a way out to happiness with diet, less beer, soaking up some sun so your body can make vitamin D or a life change, but that's never explored, you are just suffering from depression and forced to live that way. Depression Quest brings up minor what ifs, such as going back to school or finding a better job might help... but well there's risk. Those statements are never followed up. You have no choice to change things in your life (the character's).

You see the character get worse and worse with no help in sight. Almost as if the entire point of this is to make you the player depressed (which is different than depression). Crossing out logical happy choices for depressing ones. This is a quick experience that finishes after maybe 2 dozen pages of text. I quickly played through it three times and it felt like while there are multiple endings, it didn't feel like I wanted to take the time to see them all. Like reading and carefully selecting my choices leads to more reading to endings that I didn't feel were satisfying. It was too quick of an experience to feel nothing more than a brief diversion. Someone did write me on how to get to the 'good ending' where you are allowed to get help, but with so many choices and endings, I found it difficult to even get the good ending with someone telling me how to achieve it. Again, the happy ending just didn't feel good or satisfying. Maybe that's depression in a nutshell or maybe that's poor writing.

To anyone suffering from depression, there is always help. There are always people willing to help and you are never alone. *hug*

Point blank: I think this game fails at what it set out to do. It doesn't make the user understand depression at all. In fact, it's just the story of some overpriviledged guy too stuck in his head. Nothing awful actually happens to the character. The player isn't made to sympathize with him in any way. Instead it just comes off as "Make the right decision and get moderately better". Actual depression is nothing like that. It just fails on all levels to capture just how dreary and dreadful the world actually looks when you've got depression. There's no sense of hopelessness or despair. The name itself "Depression Quest" is utterly uncreative and unimaginative as well.

First of all, I hold no grudge against any group, this is merely how I truely think of this program.

Depression Quest is a program that focuses on what appears to be chronic depression and more specifically from a female mindset. Keeping in mind that this is dubbed "an interactive fiction game" with almost no gameplay, I would like to think of this program as more of a webpage story. The writing in this program is at a level of articulation and description that I would expect from a middle school student. Personally, I was disapointed in the level of writing most of all, with this program being a text-based program.

I'd like to make a note for anyone coming here thinking that suicide is a theme here. Chronic depression rarely results in suicide. On the other hand, major depression is typically what actually can result suicide.

I find this program cringe-worthy and I am personally embarrassed to have this associated with depression. I would recomend this to anyone who enjoyed Gone Home, anyone without strong emotional intelligence, and anyone with depression looking for a good laugh with friends with depression.

Regardless of my views of the developer, I decided to play and review Depression Quest honestly. And while it tries to be an interesting interactive fiction game, it suffers from several misteps that ultimately made me feeling like DQ was poorly done and pointless to play.
The first thing was the music. I understand something upbeat and jazzy may not have been appropriate, but the same three or so bars of minor chord piano music just got annoying far too quickly. I would have liked an option to turn it off.
As for the gameplay, it's completely told through text with decisions at the bottom, like Choose Your Own Adventure books. The writer was of average quality. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't exactly Virginia Wolfe either. The choices frustrated me, however, by having you frequently unable to select more positive choices over more negative ones. I get that this was to simulate the 'it will never get better' feelings of depression, but there is a difference between feeling it will never improve and actively being unable to make a positive choice in your life, even ones like seeing a therapist. When I was depressed, they couldn't make me NOT see one.
On the bottom of your screen, you have boxes that discuss your condition in regards to depression, if you're in therapy, and whether you take medication or not. It seemed to me, though, that no matter how well the little box said you were doing, the story never reflected that through a brighter outcome (until the ending at least) or by letting you make more positive choices. I understand depression is a struggle, but I never felt any sort of real sense of progression beyond the game occasionally telling me I was with a token pat on the back.
I also question whether this game belongs on Steam. I know it used to be a browser game, but it still looks and plays exactly like a browser game. Why does Steam have to be involved? In the end, I would not have played this game if it wasn't free.
4/10

I'm not even sure what to say about this thing. It's just boring and is entirely all reading.

Depression Quest is a very, very basic wall of text formatted into several linear paths about depression. Literally, wall of text after wall of text without any visuals other than grainy photographs at the top and a really depressing audio (similar to Minecraft's music). The story is written in a way that makes you feel like you're living a dead-end life without any motivation to go on. A bad event comes after bad event. Think of the game like a text-based version of The Walking Dead.

Don't even bother trying this "game." If you really wanted to read up on depression, you can do so online with an easy Bing search. They even have a controls page. Don't know why anyone would ever use that, but they do.

Obligatory Score: Steam asks "Do you recommend this game?" Is this a game? Can I review it? Is this real life? 1/10. According to Zoe Quinn, it's "award winning."

As someone who has been diagnosed with clinical depression at the age of 17 (now 22), as well as living with a diagnosed manic depressive older brother and formerly suicidal sister, I felt like this game, Depression Quest, could help me gain stability in parts of my life where I lack.
As it turns out, it is nothing short of insulting. Depression Quest takes the impossible weight and drain of simply feeling /bad/, and reduces it to a rather whiney, irritating and self-absorbed narrative. It /then/ takes the raging emotional battles and incredible fears cloud rational thought and displays them as so many single-line responses. I KNOW WHAT TO DO. I KNOW A SEEING THERAPIST IS THE CORRECT CHOICE. I KNOW LYING BACK IN BED IS THE WRONG CHOICE. It's not about what you should do, it's about how in the heck to conquor all that negativity and emotional drag to get anywhere. It's about how to consciously break those cycles of self-hating thoughts and stop those feelings before they happen. Bear in mind these are only my objections to the depiction of depression as a disorder.

Depression Quest as a game? I have literally read popup books that were more interactive, and I use the term correctly. The 1996 classic Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey was 100 times the game this one could ever hope to be, and it had a neato dog. I tried to think of games that came close to being as frustrating to play, aside from personally offensive, and I counted to None! None games! Ah ah aaaahhh!

This is not a game. It is a digital "choose your own adventure" book, except none of the choices you make actually effect the ending.

The music intentionally tries to provoke an emotional response from the player because of how mediocre the writing is. None of the scenarios or characters presented in the story are convincing, and it's pretty obvious from the beginning that the writers are purposefully trying to railroad you into very specific and unrealistic situations.

This "game" is a complete waste of a greenlight spot and the fact that the only reason it's gotten good reviews is because lead developer Zoe Quinn slept with every game "journalist" with a pulse makes Depression Quest the embodiment of what is wrong with the games industry.

Depression Trigger Quest.

I've never had any intention of giving something on steam a negative review and I've played some terrible games, but don't take this as a negative review, take it as a warning.

If you suffer from or have ever suffered from depression STAY AWAY from this. Go load up a game in your library that you get enjoyment out of, and just like anyone who tells you to "man up" or "get over it" DELETE them from your life or in this case library, and get help! Depression is not your fault!

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/mental-health-helplines.aspx

A quick look on a search engine will find you help in your country too.

<3

i realy cant think of anything to say about this game, or short novel, but this "IF U ARE DEPRESSED DONT PLAY THIS" it is what it is a quest to survive depression more like overcome it but the thing is that its realy one sided i mean if its meant to be relatable for people with depression but it takes it a little to far cause all one needs is the will to do things and blocking some of the options on decision making is stupid simply because, well let me put it this way ur trying to help someone overcome depression right or at least help in understanding hence u cant just deny someone an option just because he/she is depressive i mean it only took me less than half an hour to complete this and understanding its so called "purpouse" but seriusly the idea is to hlep people not telling them another sad story about a guy that cant make simple decision's just because he/she is depressed, realy i se no logic in this and im realy dissapointed about it, as a story "might" be kind of good, as a method to help understand depression not good, it felt more like a cry for help from the protagonist of this game for being stuck and his shamefull reality. i could go on and on about it but it be pointless.

I know this is free and all, but does that mean crashing it twice in the time I have played this make it even worth reading all of this text? It is a text adveture for crying out loud. Also, music, way too loud.

On a side note to the depression at hand. I see how a person can get this depressed. I don't, I am depressed often, but that comes and goes. I don't see a shrink, I don't take meds. I don't normally think about kiling myself. You just have to find your inner child, that for me is in gaming.

The case of this non-fictional character is an extreme case. And in case of extreme, go get help. I would.

EDIT: Since review only shows played in hours: I have played this game for 23 minutes, or 2 times game crashing on me.

I "played" this choose-you-own-adventure story three times now, because I wanted to be fair. It's hard to believe how bad this game is. Aside from being a dull slog through page after page of descriptions of how meaningless and troubled your life is, the game is frankly insulting and insensitive to people suffering mental illness.

Speaking for myself, as an actual person being treated for actual depression by an actual doctor, it was beyond frustrating to find that pretty much every action I chose just led to having more and more positive actions cut off. The *ahem* "developer" of this story seems to believe that people with depression are hopelessly beset on all sides by unsolvable problems and people who just don't understand how awful life is. Where are the options for seeking and getting help, leading to improved circumstances? I did not see them.

The music is okay, pretty basic background music that seems intended to be sort of evocatively bluesy. If there was anything actually happening, it might be interesting. There is an annoying staticky noise that becomes more intrusive as you go. Apparently this is supposed to represent how unpleasant it is to be depressed? It does succeed here, somewhat, in the sense that (again, speaking on ly for myself) a depressed person might experience a sort of "mental chatter" or background noise that can make it difficult to concentrate. This would be useful if one could do anything in this story other than grow progressively more despondent.

Indeed (*spoiler alert*) on the very first choice, you already have "Order some food, grab a drink, and hunker down for a night of work" REMOVED from you possible options. The other 3 options are, basically: reluctantly try to make yourself do something; waste time watching TV instead of working; or, just go to bed. You have no real agency in the story. You are completely at the mercy of circumstances and the poor choices you are forced to make.

This game fails at being a game. It fails at being a portrayal of depression, except for the attitude that "things are hopeless and there's pretty much nothing one can do but have one's life and relationships ruined by the cold uncaring world. It does succeed, in a perverse ay, at living up to its name. If you are on a quest for depression, this game will surely hand it to you.

The best way to misunderstand depression.

I originally wanted to play the game to see what everyone got so riled up about, and here is my opinion, as unbiased as I can be with knowledge of the whole scandal that's going on with the developer.

This isn't really a game so much as it's a novel. "40k words of interactive fiction" is one way the dev describes it in her "About" section, including the phrase that "playthroughs are short enough to be done in one day, but long enough for the game to have gotten it's [sic] point across." You'd assume that someone doing a text-heavy (or text-entirely) game would know English, but it's clear the dev either doesn't, or failed to edit this well or at all, as evidenced by punctuation mistakes and incorrect spelling within the game itself.

For instance: "When you go top bed that night..."

And describing this game as something you can play through in one day is fortunately accurate. I finished my first playthrough in about 25 minutes. I went through a second time to see where other paths would lead me, and that time I skimmed the text (the writing style isn't very interesting) and I bumped my total playtime up to about 45 minutes. That's probably all of the time I'm going to play this game.

Going off of my little experience with this game, another major criticism I have with this game is that for 40k words, nothing really changes from playthrough to playthrough. Essentially, your character plays through the same 20 (just a guess) days with slight variations depending on previous choices. I got a cat. Five days later, I played with the cat and maybe got a little less depressed. The cat was mentioned in later days but was not offered as an option, just more scenery. Exit cat.

I think the dev should have either cut down on the prose, which was less enlightening and more grating, or offered more options that affected the game/made it longer. Instead, I chose whether or not to go to work fifteen times and then got a good ending. This isn't a game about a person with depression, this is a game about a person with depression who is also mind-numbingly boring.

A problem that also plagues any game with any sort of choice is the ambiguity of the choices the player is offered. I was having lunch with a character (Amanda? My brother? My mother?) and they asked me if I was feeling down. Among the choices listed was the option to "Notice hands are shaking."

What does that even mean? My curiousity got the better of me, and I picked it. This lead me to have a breakdown, cry in their car, and later have them send me the contact information for a therapist. Okie-dokie. This reminds me of when I played LA Noire, tried to doubt a character, and ended up screaming at them for being the murderer, with the exception of LA Noire being a good game.

Going off a previous complaint I listed above, for a game that is essentially writing, the prose just isn't interesting. It's bearable and usually not entirely riddled with errors, but nothing about it really got me into the game. It seems more like something that should be on DeviantArt. Long sentences, peppered with commas, all about how tired I am, and how crushingly hard my life is, and how my girlfriend, Alex, is really sweet and all, but I just can't open up to her, because I'm afraid she'll find me boring, or she'll realize I'm a terrible person, and yadda yadda yadda. It's middling at best, tiresome at worst.

Another thing I dislike about the game is that it does very little to make the characters (the player character and others) real, identifiable people. At a point in the game I was given the option to call someone because I needed someone to talk to or something. It listed three people, my brother, my mother, and one other, but all three had only their names and their "traits" listed directly after them, something which irks me to no end. Rather than flesh out the characters, the dev just pasted adjectives behind them to save the work of actually being good at character development.

After all that criticism, I do have to say that the game is (maybe?) realistic. I've never been depressed or been involved with someone who was, but going off my poor knowledge of depression, it seems semi-accurate. That being said, it also seems less like the dev herself has ever actually been depressed or been with someone who was depressed and more like she once Googled "depression symptoms" and decided to make a game out of them. This game does not feel like a labor of love. This game feels like a means to an end.

TL;DR
Not great, play Skyrim instead. And I don't even like burgers.

This is the worst game I have ever played. Hell, calling it a "game" is too nice of a word to use for it. It's not. It's just a giant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ed wall of text. This "game" fails on so many levels that I'm appalled that this passed being Greenlit. I'm even more so that this capitalized on Robin Williams' sad death.

Depression Quest fails on so many levels even down to it's message of educating people about depression. It's a failure. Nothing more, nothing less.

Right when you start the game you know you're in for something terrible just from the first sentence that reeks of SJWs. "You are a twenty something human being"

NO! REALLY!? I THOUGHT I WAS A FREAKING CHIPMUNK! PLEASE, TELL ME MORE. DO I BREATHE AND LIVE TOO!?

Then the sudden realization hits you like a truck. Remember when I said wall of text? That's the "gameplay." Read some text, click on a hyperlink. Rinse and repeat. It wouldn't be that bad if the story was interesting but it's not. You are Mr. Perfect. You have a job, girlfriend, awesome friends, but you are somehow depressed, game never really goes into detail why. Maybe you got touched by a rodeo clown or something, I don't know. I would care about what he was going through if there was an emotional connection but there's not.

The only music there is in this game is a sad excuse of a piano piece and some dumb sounding party sound effects.

The length of the game? It took me eight minutes to beat. EIGHT MINUTES! There is no way in hell you can get an emotional response out of anyone in just eight minutes with the way this thing was written.

Sonic 06 is better than this because although it is broken, it at least has gameplay. In closing don't play this game. It fails on it's very premise and what it aims to do. It may be eight minutes, but the anger will always remain.

When I started this game, I was highly sceptic of it. It is just a simple text game, nothing special about it in regards to it's format. In fact, the format did leave a bit to be desired. The story is more of what kept drawing me in. I personally have depression, and from what I could see I do not doubt at least one of the developers has it as well; it seemed quite apparent that intesive research must have been done/ one of these developers has experience in dealing with the psychological effects/treatments of depression. I could honestly care less about the educationaly value this game gives as opposed to the potential theraputic benefits, as I myself did not realize how much I really had in common with this protagonist. Many of the problems he faces are internal battlefields, and each decision will cause a chain reaction to how he will deal with further adversery.

Overall, I would reccomend this game only if you either have depression, or wish to learn more about what it is like for those that have it. If you play it otherwise, I can only assume that you will experience massive irritation and/or boredom. If, for some un-godly reason, this turns into something you need to pay for, DO NOT BOTHER. It really is not worth more than 50 cents, and even that is generous.

So why am I not reccomending it? Because one of the developers Has made this game popular ONLY by exploiting people in situations VERY SIMILAR TO THE PROTAGONIST! This Zoe Quinn would exploit the fact that people would not understand a very few, who coincidentally dislike her game, and make it seem as though this game is not going to become big because of the fact that she is a woman. Honestly? I do not this that this could ever be considered a game. It really is not one, to be honest. It is an interactive stoy at best, and really has little place on steam.

I rarely write reviews for anything.

But this struck a raw nerve for me. This is neither a good game, text based adventure, nor information about depression.

I felt patronised by the characterisation, insulted by the terrible use of imagery and the occasional jarring use (and often misuse) of "complicated" words.

At times I wonder whether the developer is a native speaker of English, this is a direct quote from the game:

"... your boss approaches you to tell you that it's dead and you can go home early..."

What is dead? Time is dead? Your job motivation is dead? Your computer? Oh wait, no - it's my immersion that is completely dead.

This "game" screams of faux intellectualism and lacks any clear reason for existing.

I wish this would just go away.

First off, I will say that this game did make me come to terms with my own depression, however it did not do so purposefully. This doesn't reallly portray what I see as depression, and that's really where this game flaws show; Not all depression is the same, and trying to portray it with one short story is obviously not going to work.

And that's another thing, this is not a game, it is a short story. It honestly looks like someone tried to put a blog post into an executable file, which is odd... Why try to get this game on Steam when it could easily be a flash game or the like? The music is terrible, as it only consists of five or so notes that are incessantly repeated. Also, I find it extremely strange that there's controller support for a game like this. Why? Was it really necessary?

And that's what this "game" really is; a bad text adventure that not only fails to be compelling as a short story or an example of the day to day life of a person suffering from depression, it also fails to be any good as a game in it's own right.

Not to mention the fact that the developer of this game is a compulsive liar, an attention ♥♥♥♥♥ in addition to actually being a literal ♥♥♥♥♥ as well, and a manipulative ♥♥♥♥ (Click here to become bitter and angry!), not that her personal life should cast a shadow on how I view this game, though it certainly did for Nathan Grayson, Joshua Boggs, etc.

I've been depressed, I don't like talking about it, and I don't like reliving it much less playing a game about it. However, this game fails to deliver by outright not letting you pick activities which you know should pick you up. Because when you are depressed you can choose to do nice things, but those nice things have no effect on your mood whatsover.

This game is unrealistic. What is portrayed is an fake depression which speaks of a lack of self-control and giving up rather than genuine depression. It starts with the stereotype that depressed people lack motivation and works from there. This is wrong. Because depression has nothing to do with what sort of activities you do, and if depression were so simple as that then it would not be a problem.

This is not a good insight into depressed people and I wouldn't recommend it.

It takes approximately 13 minutes to go through 1 playthrough, admittedly not reading everything because walls of text. I enjoy interactive fiction, and I do think this is an important message, but steam is not the place for it.

I realized after downloading this that I played this a long time ago on the web somewhere, and already knew how it went because nothing's changed in that time. The "game" has not evolved and I see no reason to spend time on it if you've played it in the past. As for thsoe who haven't, if you don't already know depression this won't really do much for you I don't think.

Along with the fact that the developer is surrounded in controversy, I see no reason this game should have gotten through greenlight, and no reason to recommend this to others.

My heart goes out to all those who suffer from depression. To you I say: You are so much more important to others than you realize, and there is no shame in needing and getting help. In fact, it is quite heroic of you to be able to admit your weakness to others and to seek to better your situation.

And to those who are depressed, this "game" will do absolutely nothing for you. Please go get professional help.

To those who are NOT depressed, you would be better of looking at your group of friends and looking for signs of depression yourself. Skip this "game" entirely. It is a waste of time.

Here are (some) warning signs of Depression and/or Suicide.

•Always talking or thinking about death
•Clinical depression -- deep sadness, loss of interest, trouble sleeping and eating -- that gets worse
•Having a "death wish," tempting fate by taking risks that could lead to death, such as driving fast or running red lights
•Losing interest in things one used to care about
•Making comments about being hopeless, helpless, or worthless
•Putting affairs in order, tying up loose ends, changing a will
•Saying things like "it would be better if I wasn't here" or "I want out"
•Sudden, unexpected switch from being very sad to being very calm or appearing to be happy
•Talking about suicide or killing one's self
•Visiting or calling people to say goodbye

If you notice that somebody you know or love exhibits some, any, or all of these symptoms, make sure you say something to them. Offer them your support. Tell somebody else about it, whether it be your high school or college councellor, this person's parents, lover, doctor, etc. Encourage this person to seek professional help. Do NOT expect them to get better on their own, and do NOT take depression lightly.

Thank you to all of you who care about your fellow human beings and are willing to make the small effort it takes to make a big difference.