- This is just intense.
But at the same time,
diving into your own emotions
to work through problems is,
fuck, it's so hard!
It's so much work.
(mystic synth music)
- My personal relationship with depression is a long one.
We met pretty young.
- I personally am not depressed.
But I do have,
a good friend of mine suffers from manic depression.
- My personal relationship with depression
is one of the outside looking in.
There are people who are very close to me
who suffer from depression.
- I've been dealing with anxiety and depression
since I was about 14 years old.
I can say from personal experience
that talking about depression to someone who isn't depressed
can be pretty difficult.
- [Guy In Hoodie] It requires a lot of empathy.
I don't know know what it's like
to be in the middle of an attack.
I don't know what it's like to be in the heart of things.
- You tend to try to choose your words carefully,
but I feel like the English language,
or whatever language that you're using,
is not equipped for it.
- It's such a unique mindset to be in
when logic kind of leaves your brain
and these negative thoughts take over.
- Depression becomes so familiar.
It makes itself that way.
It's so funny how depression is like this blanket,
and it's so familiar.
And so you kind of,
once it gets you, it gets you and it stays with you.
- If I found a game that helped me understand
what depression was like,
I think it would be very valuable.
- It would help me understand,
or it would help me learn words
when I'm trying to describe something.
- To Leave is a game about a boy named Harm,
who is living with manic depression.
The game is designed to be really open to interpretation,
which makes me a little bit worried
that it will be tough to digest.
♪ Let's take a look ♪
♪ In a book ♪
♪ Do, do, do, do, do, do, do ♪
- Devote your full attention
to what you're about to experience.
You won't regret it.
Yours truly, Freaky Creations.
Oh, shit, and there's, websites may be of assistance.
That is so (bleep) awesome.
- Chapter one, intoxication.
- Never a great idea for
someone who's going through heavy depression,
but definitely a way that a lot of people cope.
- Is he making medicine?
- That's definitely not matcha.
- Oh, god.
It's like he knows it's a bad idea too.
He does it anyway.
Oh, okay.
What was that he just drank?
What is going on?
- Now we're like a shadow land?
I'm trying to understand what's happening.
- This feels like an escape.
- The graphics totally shifted.
- Little happy laugh-y faces.
Let's hook up as many of those as we can.
This is like euphoria.
- The lack of tutorial is freaking me out a little bit.
- Even now, I'm still waiting for a popup menu
to just come and make everything make sense.
- I guess I interact with this pretty thing.
Oh. - Almost gives me anxiety
that I don't know what I'm looking for,
which is life I guess.
- Lots of doors.
Lots of portals to other places.
Ooh, and a smoochie.
I can't tell how old this guy is.
I don't know if this is weird or not.
Oh.
- I was just having a good time,
and now he's throwing up.
- That hard cut back to reality,
I feel that real deep.
- From what's been described to me by my friend,
that's kind of how it is.
Basically like a rollercoaster.
Highs, and then suddenly it's a low.
- Chapter two, commitment.
I'm seeing the aesthetics of the apartment,
the sinking candles.
It's like his lair.
So a lair can be good, 'cause it can be secret,
it can be where you hold your power,
or it could be more like a jail cell.
So I guess we'll figure that out.
- Okay, so he's writing to himself.
"I'm still hungover but eager to start.
"The first step is to awaken the Origin Gate
"out of its millennial slumber."
I have no idea what that means.
- There's a really interesting line here.
"I'm already decided what shall be my gift.
"It's the only thing that's mine to give,
"a slice of my soul."
- "It'll be a simple matter of going through my magical door
"and traversing the Dark Void.
"Easy."
That's not easy.
- Let's see what else is around.
"The truth is that after Fay's death,
"I wanted to cut off everything and everybody from my life.
"So I hammered this door to its frame
"and piled up all this trash here.
"Little by little, visitors happened less and less
"until eventually, all stopped coming together."
(sighs)
- I just got really sad.
- If you were on the other side of that door
and you see somebody hammering their door to their wall,
you would take it as, all right,
I guess he wants to be alone.
But should he be alone?
- There's just so much trash blocking that door.
And it's boarded shut.
This person really is suffering.
- I've had, the very close person
has stayed in the bed for a whole day before.
And it's just like, come on, get up, let's do this.
But this is what it might look like from their side.
- It's the little things.
It's stuff like that that you wouldn't know
unless you've actually been through it.
- And this magic door thing is obvious not real.
I'm assuming it's his subconscious,
or diving into himself.
But he's projecting it outwards so that it's not about him,
which I think is a coping mechanism for a lot of people
who don't want to acknowledge
that the depression is their thing.
If they make it an outward thing,
it's easier for them to pick it apart
and work through it.
- Remain in the Dark Void?
No thank you.
- What's that little sad cube man?
He's so sad.
- I'm are running out of power.
Wait, what's going on?
- I see my vibrances,
something that I have to, guess, pay attention to.
- This feels a little bit more like
a game I'm used to.
Very Mario Brothers-y.
- Yeah, I like that he can land and grab things.
- That I think it's interesting that
to finish the first objective, I have to harvest souls.
Which, I just gave a piece of mine,
so souls are currency in this game.
- Hello?
Oh my god.
That sucked all the energy out of me.
- Oh my god, my character's dying.
Wasting away, this is so slow.
- You lose a lot of your dexterity and your movement.
You can't jump as high, you can't move as fast.
- Oh, I have no vibrance now.
So that sucked all the vibrance of me.
Oh, then I just go and collapse on my bed.
That's all the diving we can do
in our mind for the day.
And that was such a simple task.
- I guess it took everything out of him,
which I guess is symbolic in itself.
- "It shall be another relatively easy incursion."
Every single time,
he's telling himself that it's gonna be easy.
But it's not easy.
He's giving part of his soul away.
- Okay, diving deeper.
I think this one will be a little harder.
- It almost looks like synapses,
like we're inside his mind.
- Okay, this one's not as sad.
Oh, now he's sad that I'm here.
God damn it.
- Wait, oh (bleep), okay.
Ah, my vibrance?
What is, what?
- How do I stop my power output from going to zero?
- Oh (bleep), oh (bleep), okay.
I don't think there's anything useful down there.
Okay, yeah, I can see that.
(bleep).
I thought I was gonna fly.
'Cause in the first chapter, I was able to fly.
So I thought that if I just fall off this cliff,
I was gonna fly.
But I was wrong.
Feed the door, try again.
I knew this was gonna happen.
He was gonna feed him his soul.
And that's like,
I don't want to give Harm's soul away.
There's only so much.
- Oh, okay, I should eat those things.
- Ooh, okay, we're flying now.
We're flying.
Ooh, this looks so cool.
- This is really hard.
- Come on, come on, come on,
come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
Oh, god.
That scared the crap out of me.
- Why do they look so upset when I land on them?
It's like everything in this world is unhappy to see me.
If you're depressed and you're around
other people who aren't,
they're not gonna react positively about it.
It's not easy for people to empathize with that
a lot of the time.
- It's really interesting in the game,
the more vibrance I have,
the more I can walk, the more I can move.
My controls are different.
- (sighs) I have to harvest more of my soul?
- Back to being a shell of myself.
♪ Also relatable. ♪
♪ Everything about this is so relatable ♪
♪ And sad. ♪
- Yeah, I think this is definitely telling me that
when you're drained, you can't really,
it's hard to do anything.
- And sometimes, this pace is how it feels
to be heavily depressed.
- I just hope it doesn't turn people off too soon
from being too heavy.
For someone who hasn't personally dealt with depression,
it might not feel as heavy to them
'cause they won't relate so hard to everything.
- So with this letter that was different
from some of the other letters,
is that it's saying that it's gonna require
a bigger and calculated practice.
It's gonna be hard,
it's going to be different.
So it's a bit of foreshadowing.
So, let's see what the next chapter brings.
- Ooh.
No!
I have to give my soul away again.
- Okay, now we're getting into actually platformer stuff.
- Okay.
- Ah!
- Hey.
At the buzzer.
- Okay, this is really hard.
You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
I'm so upset. (laughs)
I'm so upset.
- Okay, this is intense as all hell.
And I'm nervous to fail.
Also very real, oh my god,
please just let me get...
If you touch anything,
you have to start back over at the last checkpoint.
Which is aggravating.
At the same time, this kind of game that's really difficult,
when you do beat a level, you feel so accomplished.
- It was much harder to navigate.
And it's very interesting 'cause I'm one of those
always optimistic people, where like,
I got a flat tire.
Well, hey, at least I got to
spend some time under the stars.
So I'm expecting as we're progressing,
a window's gonna open up, the colors are gonna change.
But no, it just seems like it's taking
more and more out of him.
- Okay, so here's the thing though.
That feeling of success and completion that I just had,
was sucked out of me
when we got to the temple and gave all the souls away.
It's very effective in balancing
the feeling of accomplishment with the feeling of
going right back to not being enough.
Good job, dude.
(laughs)
This game is legit.
- The vibrance stuff.
I know what that freaking feels like!
- The game is difficult, which I think is good.
I think it paints a picture that depression
is not something that's easy to overcome,
and that is something that takes a lot of repetitive work.
- Knowing the background of this,
I can see the similarities of somebody that has depression
in the character, how the character is feeling.
- I think this game can definitely help people
who want to understand more about depression.
Simply because not necessarily what you do in the game,
but what you cannot do.
The door was hammered, I can't leave.
The sky is dark, I can't look up.
It definitely puts the shoe on the other foot,
and it lets me know that sometimes you're not smiling
because you chose not to,
but more so because that's not one of the choices listed.
- I think this game could be beneficial
to the mental health community.
The vocabulary that's in this,
a doctor could help talk and communicate
with the patient/player.
I wish I had something like this
during my time when I was going through
my mental illness.
- If my friend was,
let's say in a good enough space to play this game
and we played it together,
it would be a good bonding experience.
- I'm really impressed that you can make a game
about such a tough topic and have it still be enjoyable.
- I definitely recommend this game.
I think it was a good one.
(slow bass music)