Trauma

If there's one emotion that games seem entirely lacking in, it would have to be melancholy. And not the faux melancholy that prevails in the trailers for Gears of War et al. What I mean is a prolonged, pensive sadness that infects your soul and lingers well after you've stopped playing. The sensation that Keats evoked thus:

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
-Keats, John--Ode to Melancholy

The challenge with trying to inspire this feeling in a game is the obstacle of merging it with matching gameplay, which Trauma manages. The gameplay is styled after a point-and-click adventure game, and the challenge of each of the four levels is to find specific dream images to interact with, and photographs to point the way and learn new gestures to perform. As a challenge, it wears thin to the point that after a while one is tempted to close the game due to the tedium of finding every one of each level's endings, having to repeat one's actions ad infinitum. As an evocation of the games framing, (a young woman recovering from a car crash in the hospitable) this neatly conveys the depression that naturally accompanies the daunting task of returning to the repetitive schedule of normal life after a traumatic event. Similarly, the brevity and abruptness of the whole experience further resonate: one or two hours before a complete and utter stop evoke a sense of true ending, enhancing the melancholy.

Trauma's visuals are fittingly ethereal, with bright, blurring lights used both as object and as tool. The dream-inspired visuals are haunting--providing simultaneous sensations of unease and curiosity, while maintaining a deep nostalgia that permeates everything. Screen transitions are all swivels between static photographs, reminiscent of trips through a family photo album, but with a more linear backbone supporting the journey.

Theming of this nature is the kind of artistic cohesion that seems so lacking in the games industry as a whole, and it's the few genuinely artistic endeavors such as this that deserve our attention. Trauma, if approached with an open mind, will lead you to a new appreciation for what games are capable of expressing.

Memorable