UVHEAD

Inspiration

I, along with several of my peers who have been diagnosed with mental disorders, have dealt with intrusive thoughts almost all our lives. It's a daily struggle, and it's one that some people couldn't continue.

These thoughts are our inner demons, telling us we're ugly, we're worthless, and whittling away at our will to live until we're just shells of human beings. You can't see them, you can't fight them, and even if you ignore them, they can still pollute every waking moment with their darkness.

I decided to help others like myself to put faces to their specific, intrusive thoughts, and fight back for once.

What it does

The player, upon starting up the game and proceeding past the main menu, will be prompted to enter in a few nagging, negative thoughts. "What is your mind telling you today?" was the best candidate for a prompt.

When the user has entered their intrusive thoughts, they will be taken to the game itself, which is a Super Mario Bros.-esque platformer. The game plays almost the same, except the enemy characters will parrot the negative thoughts entered at the beginning in a randomly-generated order. The player can earn Recovery Points for squashing these thoughts, which will contribute to their score. If the player is hit or "dies" they will receive words of encouragement to continue, and can start where they left off any number of times.