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Two new computer games focus on mental health

One new computer game helps challenge users’ misconceptions about OCD, while another enables people to explore their mental health

18th July 2024 about a 3 minute read
“While compulsions can take physical forms such as excessive cleaning, many people with OCD experience ‘mental compulsions’ such as rumination, reviewing situations, reassurance-seeking and researching. Crucially, compulsions are done in response to the overwhelming anxiety caused by intrusive thoughts or images." Mairéad Ruane, co-producer, She Could Fly

A new virtual escape game, designed by game developers, scientists and film-makers, aims to challenge prejudices about obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game is a point-and-click psychological adventure game inspired by the comic book She Could Fly.

The aim of the game is to explore the flat of the protagonist Hanna and find a way out by solving puzzles and tackling fear monsters along the way.

She Could Fly has been developed with the guidance of the charity OCD Action. The charity is concerned that it typically takes people with OCD six-to-seven years to seek help after they first notice symptoms. It attributes this delay to “the pervasive lack of understanding and trivialisation surrounding the condition.”

The game’s co-producer, Mairéad Ruane, who has lived experience of OCD, hopes that the game will address the seriousness of untreated OCD, as well as the misconception that it is just a “trivial quirk”.

Ruane said: “While compulsions can take physical forms such as excessive cleaning, many people with OCD experience ‘mental compulsions’ such as rumination, reviewing situations, reassurance-seeking and researching.  Crucially, compulsions are done in response to the overwhelming anxiety caused by intrusive thoughts or images.

“These can include, but are not limited to, fears about violence (especially towards loved ones); blasphemous or taboo sexual thoughts; and contamination fears. It is crucial to remember that the content of these obsessions are ego-dystonic: they are the opposite to a person’s values, beliefs and actions.”

Both Ruane and Sara Kenney, the writer and co-producer, worked with a team of lived experience experts to develop the content and create a global engagement campaign to change perceptions about OCD.

The developers were supported by a team of scientists, psychologists and medical humanities experts from Bath University, Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital, Oxford University, Cambridge University, OCD Action and the University of Southern Mississippi.

Delving into dreams and nightmares

She Could Fly is not the only new computer game to focus on mental wellbeing. A new computer game, Guilt for Dreaming, is designed to help people to explore their mental health.

The game, developed by Salmaan Zhang, won a national award at the Games Innovation Challenge 2024. He competed against university and college students from across the UK to win one of seven categories in the competition.

Guilt For Dreaming is an abstract adventure that delves into the dreams and nightmares of the player’s mind as they meet faces from their past and rekindle lost passions they once had.

The game enables players to embark on an inner journey through the dreams and nightmares of the past, reclaiming lost passions and saving themselves from a bleak future.

Zhang, who has just completed his final year studying a BSc in computer science, said: “Guilt for Dreaming is a mostly nonviolent video game that explores themes of mental health, friendship and identity. I wanted to make a game that explored mental health in a more PG-friendly way as most games often approach it as a fairly heavy and dark subject matter. Balancing my time between studying, working on my dissertation and making the game was tricky, but it was great being able to use my programming skills to do something I really enjoy.”

FCC Insight

These two new computer games, while very different from each other, both focus on mental health. While one aims to educate people and challenge them on their preconceptions, the other is intended to help people explore their own mental health in an engaging way.

Although computer games often receive a bad press, and are believed by some to be detrimental to mental wellbeing, these two new games showcase the potential the medium offers for informing and educating people about mental illness – as well as encouraging them to think more imaginatively about their own mental wellbeing. Both these games could pave the way for other designers to follow suit in developing games that explore mental health, demonstrating the innovative potential applications of everyday technology already in many homes.