A visual novel about trauma
Amy Dentata is a game developer’s game developer, though her next project doesn’t look like it’s made to appeal strictly to game design theorist. Trigger is a visual novel about suffering from PTSD and the process of discovering that you have the condition. That’s something a lot of people in and out of gaming culture can relate with.
Like Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety, and other related ailments, PTSD can deeply affect a person while remaining mostly invisible to them. It can feel quite natural for someone with PTSD to isolate at home for days, to experience continuous circular thoughts that center around past trauma, to be preoccupied with threat avoidance, and to feel drained and frayed all the time, despite the efforts of friends and family to show support. In short, PTSD can lead someone to feel right about doing the “wrong” thing for themselves.
It will be interesting to see how Amy and her team work to depict this complicated illness. The game only needs a few thousand more dollars to go before it makes its Kickstarter goal, so hopefully we’ll be able to find out for ourselves soon enough.
