The Mental State of Darkest Dungeon

So, I had two ideas that I wanted to talk about on Darkest Dungeon. One of them was what I covered
last time, on how it could potentially mislead people into thinking it's meant to be conquered. And now,
I want to talk about how Darkest Dungeon succeeds and fails in how it handles mental health. I love 
Darkest Dungeon. But I think it's most interesting parts are where it falters. So, uh, sorry to the devs.
I promise I love your game. 

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So, mental health is a huge part of Darkest Dungeon, and it's the biggest threat to your party's 
wellbeing. Physical wounds and maladies (besides illness) will soon fade, but mental ramifications
stay for much, much longer, and can have debilitating effects. Your party members might become 
terrified of the dark, suspicious and paranoid, or so incredibly stressed, they'll suffer a heart attack and
die right there. It's perhaps the most central part of the game, so let's break it down and see how it
fares.

First, let's just look at the two main ways it handles this: stress and afflictions. Stress is a stat that
accumulates on each member as you delve into the dungeon, a number from 0-200. At 100, the 
member will have their resolve tested, and may either break down (Paranoia as an example) or come
out stronger and virtuous. These effects can be dissipated by bringing stress down in town. The other
manner it occurs in is in afflictions, that don't go away after fights. Things like being terrified of beasts,
or compulsive. They can be gotten rid of, but only at the sanitarium. 

Darkest Dungeon is a two headed beast when it comes to how it represents these things. On one
hand, the effects are real and accurate. On the other, when it comes to the aftermath of dealing with
it, that's when things get a bit more iffy.

But let's take the good first. The actual ramifications and impact of mental health is quite well shown, 
at least in my opinion. It struck me how it would often show how debilitating even benign sounding
ideas could be. Compulsive characters would check everything, to their detriment. Some people
will have issues functioning at max in certain environments or when faced with certain threats. The
ways that one's brain rubs up against the world is very real.

As well, stress is also well handled (for the most part). It slowly builds and builds as you go about
your tasks, and eventually can overtake you and severely impact your functioning in a life and death
scenario. Stress doesn't go away afterward, and you have to deal with it somehow. Often the only 
option isn't a very healthy one, but you've gotta, otherwise it'll destroy your heroes. And it never goes
away, really. Every time you make someone go in, they will get stressed and will get worse. You
can only ever try to smartly deal with it. That's pretty real.

So that sounds all peachy keen, right? Well, yeah, but there is a lot wrong with how they show mental
health in this game. While I understand that much of it is trying to keep with the medieval, macabre, 
horror theme, I can't help but seriously notice that much of how they frame dealing with mental health,
is, to put it bluntly, incorrect and plays into some rather unfortunate ideas. 

Let's start with the afflictions. Right away, my main beef with them is that they're presented as 
character flaws, moral failings, issues to be fixed. Having uncontrollable thoughts is presented on the
same level as being a "known cheat". That is a view of mental health that is quite frankly outdated and 
harmful. Someone hasn't "failed" or is a worse person because they're struggling. That isn't to say I 
have an issue with the idea of dealing with them...

What I have an issue with is how you deal with them in the game, as in, you can't often make these
things go away. You can't just go to some hospital and ask them to cure your compulsions, or fix
your attention issues. In reality, dealing with this is often a lifelong management process, where
treatment is making the issue so manageable it doesn't impact you anymore. In Darkest Dungeon
you just go to the hospital and then boom, suddenly you're all "right" again, all "proper". 

The history of mental health treatment is long and sordid, but in a nutshell, so much harm has been 
done by this mindset of "make them normal again". That normality is a hurtful lie, and we should be
accepting how people just work differently and work with them, and not just try to hide them.
Darkest Dungeon ends up saying "fix your workers, and if you can't, throw them aside". It implies
that really, all you need is a week in a hospital and you'll be right as rain. Simply put, no. That's not how
it works, and that's not how it should work.

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There also comes an issue with the conditions that result from high stress, as I mentioned earlier.
While I feel the effects are shown well, dealing with them is ridiculously too easy for my tastes. You
simply get your stress down in town and they will vanish, no lingering effects whatsoever. I hope the
issue is quite self evident. You can't just "destress" paranoia or things like that, the effects can linger
and haunt you. A night at the bar is a bandage. Not a solution.

My other primary issue is with the virtue system. I think this is great mechanically... not so much if
you're looking at it through this lens. People don't just "overcome" stress and anxiety and get better.
It's a long, hard, strenuous process with a lot of hardship and challenge. Insinuating that people can
somehow perform at their best under immense mental stress is a bit off. 

Darkest Dungeon ends up being a game that carefully shows the pains of mental health, but fails
to show the struggles to fix it properly. It sacrifices accurate portrayal for gameplay purposes, and in
the process misrepresents quite a few things. At the end of the day, the game ends up treating
mental health in a very haphazard manner, and ends up framing it as some evil failing we need to
correct. It shows it well. But it comments on it harmfully.

Furi: Punchy, Memorable, and Drenched in Character

Furi is the kind of fast, punchy action I love, because it wants to use its fast, punchy action for a good
purpose. Most other games will look at enemy design, dialogue, and attacks from a strictly gameplay
point of view. "What's the most engaging to play?" is the driving question, and usually the safest and
smartest question to ask. These kind of games often look to make their mechanics the most "artistic" 
and most fleshed out, and that's a good choice.

What if, however, a game asked "what's the most engaging to interact with"? What makes the best 
scene, not just best to play. Well, Furi. This small game uses its mechanics to make the bosses you 
fight memorable, unique, and full of character. While it may sacrifice a bit of gameplay depth, Furi sticks 
to its guns and plays with consistent ideas and mechanics to make characters out of each obstacle.

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So let's start by asking the question: what are these mechanics?

1. Projectiles. Bosses in Furi will utilize energy-like shots, in the same vein as an arcade shoot-em'-up. 
They might be small, they might be large, they might be impossible to destroy, they might give health 
pickups. But they all have them.

2. AOE attacks. Energy waves, blasts, cones, you name them. They're basically just areas of the 
battlefield that will become unsafe to touch for a while. 

3. Melee. Most bosses will get up close and personal at some point or another. They'll go for direct 
attacks, to be parried, or short range AOE, which must be dodged.

Those are the three standard types of attacks, which is why we're going to start with how bosses will
bring their own mechanics to it. Every boss in Furi will use the three above methods of pain. 
However. Bosses will bring their own unique scenarios very often, and breaking from the standard
leaves an impression.

Take The Burst. She'll start the first three phases of her fight by running away, staying invisible, and 
shooting at you with a sniper rifle. That kills you in one hit. This gives the impression of a very
dangerous, elusive person that prefers to hide in the shadows, and takes great pleasure in it. This is
further emphasized by her low health bar when you do catch up to her. She's not fighting you head on
unless she has to (unlike every other boss) and that difference fleshes out what kind of a person
and fighter she is.

Or The Strap, who has maybe my favourite fakeout in the game. She'll run away, and you'll be left alone for
a good chunk of a minute. It's quiet. Unnerving. You wonder if something's gone wrong. Then, all of a 
sudden, she'll jump out and you have to fend her off with a quick time event. No other boss leaves you 
alone for so long, and no other boss catches you off guard like this. I was laughing at how inventive this 
was for the rest of the fight, and it certainly serves to show her feral, crafty, and uncontrollable nature.

Furi is never content to just ask "what's the most interesting in gameplay". I'd argue that being left alone
for about 30 seconds isn't the most engaging thing. But it leaves an impact, an impression, a character
in your head, and this philosophy of shines through in the rest of the game, even in the standard 
mechanics. 

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Look at The Scale, who has slow and meandering attacks, that will also mess with your vision if you're 
hit. It's toxic. Debilitates you. Makes you panic. This is a character who wants to slowly kill you and 
torture you, and it's not just shown in what he says.  

Or, perhaps The Line, who has a first phase with reflecting shields, that send projectiles at you when you 
shoot them. And later, he'll freeze time, including your bullets if you shoot, and you can then take 
damage if you run into them. He is making you your own worst enemy, and almost feels as though he's
trying to teach you that. 

And finally, maybe my favourite boss, The Hand. He has a shield to reflect your projectiles. He'll move as
quick or as slowly as he pleases. He's got oddly timed melee attacks designed to make you parry too 
quick. And halfway through the fight he changes his fighting style completely. This is a crafty, trained,
motivated, and deadly warrior who fights using everything he's got. That leaves an impression.

This is how the game operates, and it's really really great at it. After I finished every fight, I was able to
say "they were a vicious sadist" or "they were a crafty strategist" and I knew that, not because I'd been
told, but because I'd played through their personalities and characters. I had fought and killed people 
and creatures with past lives, current wants, personal reasons and motivations. And that is... well, I
think it's pretty neat!

This isn't to say every game should strive for this. Furi sacrifices some raw depth because it sticks so
closely to the core 3 mechanics I mentioned earlier. It's not a combat system on the level of Bayonetta 
or Devil May Cry. Some bosses end up being not as satisfying to play because of their dedication to
character-infused attacks (curse you, The Line). 

But by and large, this game isn't trying to be the deepest, or most consistently well designed to play. It's 
trying to get you to engage with the world through gameplay. And though it stumbles once or twice, this 
is a driving force of design I want to see more of. Furi is a great showing. 
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(Addenum: You might have seen me rail against games that shame you or limit you for choosing easier
difficulties, and Furi does just this. While I'll go a tad easier on the devs since I'm pretty sure the 
difficulty was a consideration for the story and world design to a certain extent, this is still wholly
unacceptable and completely exclusionary to people with limited time or accessibility issues. Tell us
the difficulty will enhance it, advise people to play on "normal" if you want, but for god's sake, don't lock
off progression or achievements for it. This is a major mark against the game and I don't want to let this
go unsaid, even if I think the rest of the game is brilliant.)

Doki Doki Literature Club - It's really good

If you haven’t played this game yet, please stop reading and go play it. It’s on Steam, it will only take you a few hours, and it’s free. I’m going to be talking openly about everything this game does and why it’s an amazing, realized experience, so spoilers all over the place here. Trust me. Go in blind.

Doki Doki Literature Club is what you make of it. I went into this game expecting some shock value horror (off of the warning at the start), a small little project in a developer’s spare time that they gave to the world for fun. What I got was a smart, thoughtful horror game that truly taps into “horror” beyond scary monsters and spooky environments. This game gets horror, this game gets metafiction, this game just knows how to do what it sets out to do.

On the most basic level, the horror, or rather the progression of such, is smooth and really well executed. From the simple, cutesy opening, you then get some poems that are maybe a bit at odds with it. Easy enough to shrug off as artsy. Then as you go on, you’ll start getting hints and nudges that there’s some pretty ugly things going on under the surface. Natsuki may be the victim of child abuse, Yuri harms herself, and Sayori, well, Sayori is the focal point of the transition from act 1 to 2.

The transition to a seemingly more serious tone and subject matter, feels like a light shift, which is the important part here. Everything still feels in control, like things are still going ok. You even get a choice, giving the feeling and illusion of a dating simulator even still. You’re still doing ok. This is just character depth. Things will be alright.

Then everything goes to shit.

Sayori’s suicide is effective for two reasons: the illusion of an “end”, and the shock. You, minutes earlier, were given a choice as to how to respond to her. Of course, it didn’t matter, and she will go through with it no matter which one you choose, but the game tells you “the end, that’s it, no do overs, she’s dead.” You think you messed up, but you never had a single choice in the matter.

The other reason is, well, the sheer shock. I’m not usually a fan of shock value. It’s cheap and easy, with no lasting value.This, however, is good shock. It serves as a transition into act 2 in tone, and most importantly, it doesn’t shy away, showing every little detail of her lifeless body. It’s shock that leaves an impact, because minutes earlier, everything told you that you were still in control. And then BAM. All a lie, and you have to see every little bit of what has happened. Your entire perception of the game is shattered in this one moment. It’s shock to do something, not just shock to shock.

I’ll stop there, because we’d be here for hours if I just broke down the actual story at play. Suffice to say, the rest of the game totally upholds the quality in this first act throughout, and is great at keeping things smart, shocking, and horrifying.

However, that’s just one half of the game’s story. The other half gets into this metafictional edge, with Monika’s full awareness that she is in a fictional game, and trying to get with *the player* specifically, as in you, the one playing the game.

The game does metafiction well, too. It’s not content to simply say “oooooooo we broke the 4th wall” and move on, no, it goes all in. Menus are bent to Monika’s will. The game will pull from your windows username to try to namedrop you and freak you out. You have to delve into the game’s files themselves in order to fix what’s wrong. It makes you intensely aware of the artificiality of it all, and it knows and understands how to craft a “game” world.

And finally, the metafiction plays into the horror. Everything in DDLC is super tightly woven and interesting, and more than anything, the game knows and understands how to keep it consistent. The metafiction and horror don’t coexist side by side, they feed into each other.

I’ve already gone on for far too long, but as a quick example of what I mean: just look at Monika’s position. She’s aware that she’s in a game, and she also really wants to love the player. BUT, the game also draws attention to how horrifying this is, how aware she is of the fakeness of her world. She has no control, no agency, and her attempts to gain such destroy everything. It’s the horror of a fake reality that is the metafiction.

That is to say, DDLC isn’t some groundbreaking plot that changed my view on the world or anything. At the end of the day, it just is what it is and doesn’t try to do more. But it is a brilliantly, expertly done story that doesn’t ever slack or leave anything hanging. It sets out what it wants to do, answers everything it needs for a satisfying story, and then lets the ideas it sets out hang for you to muse on. That is how you write a story, and DDLC is a shining example of it.