As Evan, I went through the motions of getting up in the morning, going to work, and returning home. Yes, I mean that as a compliment.Īs I played through Actual Sunlight, I couldn't help but be affected by Evan's mental and emotional state.You may not have much control over Actual Sunlight's narrative, but I still feel like it benefits from being a story that is told in the form of a game rather than a book or a film.
As I played through Actual Sunlight, I couldn't help but be affected by Evan's mental and emotional state O'Neill's use of language is strong and unflinching (this is most definitely not a game for children), and over time, I began to feel beaten down by these interludes. The voices in his head never stop laying on the self-loathing, nor do they stop commenting on the perceived pointlessness of his job, his failure to form meaningful relationships, and anything else they can use to suggest that Evan's entire existence is utterly worthless. In these interludes, Evan's emotional emptiness, the lack of a sense of meaning in any aspect of his life, is not just apparent it's relentless. Actual Sunlight's power comes from the way that your experience playing as Evan is constantly interrupted by his thoughts and imaginings. Set in present-day Toronto, the game places you in the role of Evan Winter, a single man who, like many depressed individuals, goes through the motions of life without revealing to anyone around him the crippling emotional and psychological burden he carries with him everywhere. Two games, Actual Sunlight by Will O'Neill and Depression Quest by Zoe Quinn and Patrick Lindsey, are taking different but equally valid approaches to this difficult subject matter.Īctual Sunlight is a linear story created by Will O'Neill in RPG Maker VX Ace. But grounded, serious, real-world portrayals of depression are not something games have concerned themselves with much, until now.
Numerous books, plays and films have attempted to illuminate the experiences of depression sufferers. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a literary classic that presents a powerful psychological portrait of the illness as experienced by its main character.
Many believe that Shakespeare's character Hamlet suffers from the disease. Help him on his journey to unite two clashing cultures, and learn the intriguing truth of his origin.Fiction that deals with depression is nothing new. Discover with him the strange nature of that universe and its inhabitants. He is the first and only of his kind: a hybrid, carrying the essences of Light and Dark.Īs soon he appears, Pales and Darks rejected him fiercely, forcing him to face alone the dangers of those lands.įollow this hybrid’s journey through the madness of war. War followed, fuelled by the prejudice between them.Īges later, in a dark pit, in a cursed land, a strange creature rises from a pile of corpses with no memories or knowledge about himself or the world around him. Despite their world being split in two by a cataclysmic event, it did not take long for the two cultures to discover each other. Long ago, a world divided between Light and Darkness emerged and Pales and Darks blinked into existence. The Lands of Oblivion, somewhere in the between. " Ophelos: the world of Light, Zigardth: the world of Darkness.
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