Reviews VideoGame / Depression Quest

Not Fun, But Good

As a game, Depression Quest isn't especially fun or even memorable but it definitely doesn't deserve the vitroilic hatred and accusations of 'Worst game ever' that it's received.

The game is undeniably a very basic model of a visual novel. Read the text, click the choice you'd like to make, repeat for about half an hour and you're done. The piano in the background is repetitive to some, but it's fitting at least; it wouldn't really be appropriate if something like 'We Love Katamari' was blaring away.

There's only one notable feature in gameplay and fortunately for the game I absolutely love it. Although you're given choices on how to act, the obviously positive choices are sometimes struck out, preventing you from choosing them. Even though this is fairly straightforward, I thought it was a really interesting and creative way to show one of the worst effects of depression; a lot of people who suffer from it are fully capable of recognizing positive steps to take but feel genuinely unable to take them. Sure enough, if you make some bad choices early on, you can't make some better choices later because you've sunk too low to turn things around so suddenly.

One of the biggest problems in the game is also one of its greatest strengths - the game is nothing more than a single example of depression, a condition which is arguably different for many of the people who suffer from it. This is a problem because some people will naturally have trouble relating to the protagonist and their actions, even people who have experienced depression themselves, but it's a strength too because the game is at least honest and never pretends to be anything more than one person's written interpretation of depression. It's not particularly groundbreaking but it's undeniably one accurate account of an illness different for many.

If you want to play a powerful game, carefully sculpted for years that changes a generation's view on a mental condition, then you might want to keep looking, but I don't think that was the developer's intention. It's a game with no budget, made in someone's spare time, available for free, that shows a single interpretation of depression. And even if you don't like it, it's free and will only waste twenty minutes of your time.

Overall, it's not fun or even entertaining but it succeeds at what it does.