Graydon Webb – The Contrarian American Running from the Voices

Sea of Solitude (8th generation consoles & PC)

I’m a real sucker for games about mental health. Having mental issues of my own for a majority of my life, I find myself either relating to these stories or, at the very least, enjoying getting a glimpse into the world of people with similar conditions. While everyone’s mental disorders vary in symptoms and strength, the one constant between them all is the hinderance they have on our everyday lives. I think video games encapsulate that sensation even easier than a film or a song can. Video games are an art form you experience firsthand, and literally playing a character with struggles you don’t always understand provides a unique gameplay hook every time.

Perhaps my favorite example of this genre is a little “indie” title published by Electronic Arts back in 2019 called Sea of Solitude. In this game, you play as Kay, a girl dealing with feelings of extreme loneliness, on a journey to fight her demons and learn how to let go of her past. It’s a thrilling ride as the player takes Kay through multiple locales, all focusing on various mental health struggles like anxiety, detachment, and isolation. It walks a beautifully fine line between relaxing open-world exploration game and uncomfortably disturbing journey into the mind. What this game does with shadows, audio, and world-bending puzzles perfectly feeds into the uneasy tone of its story.

If you’ve never given Sea of Solitude a chance, I strongly suggest you do. I’ve suggested it to my friends for years, as it not only helped me, someone with a mental disorder, but it can also help people without them learn a bit more about them (Hellblade has a similar effect). In 2021, a Director’s Cut edition was released for the Nintendo Switch, though I can’t really recommend that version, as it was published by a rather disreputable studio instead of EA (who is, comparatively, a lot more reputable). It’s just so nice to see a big company like EA take a chance on smaller titles like Sea of Solitude. Even more recent games like Lost in Random, It Takes Two, and Knockout City have had so much breathing room because a massive, established publisher took a chance on them. I think if we cast more focus on AA titles like these, we’ll watch nothing but creativity flow through the industry once more.