The game I decided to delve into is called Gris. I actually had gotten it on Switch because I was intrigued by the really pretty art and the theme especially caught my attention. At first glance I thought it was going to be a light game. It’s a game about grief and progressing through the five stages. I thought it was really cool how starting out I had very limited movement and the scenery was relatively bare, but as I progress through I can move in various ways and my inner crumbling world becomes more and more clear and complex. I think this is a huge part of the narrative that ties into the game’s social message of progressing through grief. You change as a player and so does the environment.
Mental health has been an increasingly more prevalent topic in society. It’s always been important, but it’s been emphasized how important it is to take care of yourself and take care of others. “Games have also held a significant place in social activist movements.” (Nissenbaum and Flanagan, 182) I think this game is a great example, because it provides a way to cope and learn how to get through our hardest emotions and thoughts that isn’t a conventional medium. It’s a game that provides “significant contributions of other initiatives that share deep connections and commonality of purpose” (Nissenbaum and Flanagan, 183) because it deals with something so heavy such as grief, which I feel has been a largely shared feeling with the ongoing pandemic, and allows a medium in which to explore and empathize. Progressing through the game, collecting mementos, collecting stars to create bridges, shows progress not only in game but “bridges” gaps in our emotions that we may not know how to work to.
Flanagan, Mary, and Helen Nissenbaum. “A Game Design Methodology to Incorporate Social Activist Themes.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems — CHI ’07, 2007, doi:10.1145/1240624.1240654.