Two days ago, Steam launched a fairly offbeat game.
The game is called Room 301 in Building 6.
It's different because it's not just a game, it's an "Alzheimer's simulator."
We've seen Images of Alzheimer's in many film and television productions. Most of them seem to have their memories back to young children, some of them can't recognize their children, some don't say a word, and some are still immersed in memories.
However, in many fictional works, we can get to know Alzheimer's patients, and it seems that most of the time we are only from the perspective of "bystanders".
The game "Room 301, Building 6", developed by the Chinese college student team Frame Studio, broke the convention and tried to tell a different story directly from the first-person perspective of Alzheimer's patients.
The so-called Alzheimer's disease is what we often call "Alzheimer's disease". It is an insidious neurodegenerative disease of the nervous system that is characterized clinically by generalized manifestations of memory impairment, aphasia, apraxia, agnosia, impaired visual spatial skills, executive dysfunction, and personality and behavioural changes, of unknown etiology. Because Alzheimer's disease is more common in people after the age of 65-70, it is called "Alzheimer's disease".
So, what kind of world will the scenery in their eyes look to us? What kind of game form is used to simulate the symptoms of trance and aberration in the daily life of Alzheimer's patients?
The answer given by the interframe studio is: walk the maze.
(At the beginning, the player needs to insert the key to enter the title screen)
"6 Buildings 301 Room" is a "narrative puzzle game". In the process, the game is divided into two screens at the same time, the left shows the world in the eyes of the Alzheimer's patient, and the right side shows the real world at the same time.
Like the beginning of the game, at the beginning of the day, the protagonist wakes up from bed and opens his eyes to see the ceiling, which is presented as two completely different pictures.
Compared with the complex objects such as ceiling lights, windows, cabinets and so on in the real world on the right, the world in the eyes of the protagonist on the left is only composed of very simple geometric lines and outlines. The dot in the center of the left screen is the "cognitive focus" that requires the player to control the movement.
Manipulating the protagonist to get up and walk out of the bedroom, we can truly appreciate the effect of this arrangement.
A common clinical symptom of Alzheimer's disease is the loss of part of the ability to intuitively translate the content of the field of vision into information that can be recognized. In the game, this cognitive disorder is manifested as: everything we see is abstracted and reduced to contours and lines.
The game also uses a field of view frame to simulate the daily cognitively restricted state of Alzheimer's patients, with a narrow field of view that allows the player to perceive only a small area of space around the focus of attention.
In the patient's world, we can find a variety of "flowers and grasses" that are disconnected from the simple lines in the process of walking the maze, and these flowers and grasses correspond to the interactive objects in the real world on the right screen. The player needs to control the movement of the attention focus in the left consciousness screen to control the movement of the line of sight focus in the right reality screen, and observe the objects in the real space through the guidance of the flowers on the left.
The addition of these conspicuous "flowers" reflects a pathological cognitive habit that patients need strong stimulation and strong guidance.
(It took half a day of effort to finally see the current time)
In addition, as a patient, the protagonist needs to take the drug three times a day.
After taking the drug, the symptoms of cognitive impairment will be alleviated to a certain extent, which is manifested in the game is the expansion of the field of view frame, which is convenient for players to find the next "flower".
All the player needs to do is navigate through this narrow labyrinth of top torture, looking for medicine and finding the highlights in the next field of vision.
Yes, all the "gameplay" of this game is almost a maze. Arguably, there is no gameplay at all.
However, the "gameplay" of this top torture seems to be very real to show us the world of disorder in the eyes of Alzheimer's patients.
Yes, the dull and painful condition of Alzheimer's disease is originally contrary to the word "gameplay". Instead of borrowing too many fancy ideas and gameplay designs to add the so-called entertainment color to the world of Alzheimer's patients, The Studio chose an intuitive and serious format to show players the cognitive world of patient disorder.
And more importantly, it's a puzzle game that focuses on "narrative". On the basis of restoring the real situation of patients, the game also uses a series of stories to connect the maze play.
In the labyrinth, we can find many objects with a strong sense of memory. For example, the English-Chinese dictionary that has been used for decades:
The protagonist's work card when he was young:
Awards pressed under a glass plate on the table:
Grade level transcript for an exam:
From these clues, we can know that the protagonist of the game was once a high school English teacher and a class teacher. Moreover, in her cognition, "there are still two students who have not entered the top 250 and have to think of a way..." She doesn't seem to notice that she's long retired, and the report card may have been decades old.
She brought her first graduating class as early as '86.
It has also long since left campus.
Every day, she seems to be immersed in the early reading sound of the tape that once broadcasts tapes to students, looking at the greeting cards sent by students, and recalling most of her life in the only sober consciousness. Each neat handwritten font seems to indicate her kindness and integrity.
Thus, the image of an amiable retired English teacher jumped on the paper.
Unfortunately, the game is still demo, and currently players can only play the content of the first day. What happened to this teacher behind the story, but also wait for the development team to further update.
In addition to these, there are some rather romantic and stream-of-consciousness expressions in the game:
On some items, red lilies even grow. This may symbolize a rooted memory, perhaps a fragment of loneliness, or a unique emotional remembrance in the eyes of the patient. In any case, these romantic images seem to allow us to see a glimmer of hope for life ignited by countless families trapped by illness.
Interframe Studios said that what they want to do is to restore the real situation of Alzheimer's patients, hoping to let more people use her eyes to see the world, experience the "them" she represents in the game, and remember the last true emotion.
As of 2020, there are already about 15 million Alzheimer's patients in the mainland, and as China's aging degree further deepens, the size and proportion of the Alzheimer's population will further increase in the future. At present, the awareness of Alzheimer's disease by the mainland masses is generally still low, and the problems it brings are not limited to the physiological trauma of the patients themselves, but also include a series of social problems caused by the lack of public awareness of the disease.
Although it is important to cure the disease, it is also important to understand the disease.
Although the current degree of game completion is not high, the enthusiasm of this group of college students to speak out for minorities also shows a valuable direction of exploration for how the art form of games should interpret its social responsibility.