Split Mind - Embodying Schizophrenia in a Game

Split Mind is a first person narrative game about the experience of living with schizophrenia. You play as a person with schizophrenia, going through a psychotic episode, over the course 4 days. Each day you will have to go through a series of everyday tasks, such as waking up, brushing your teeth and working on an assignment. Over the course of the game, these tasks will progressively become more difficult to complete as the psychosis develops and starts to disrupt your grasp on reality.

The Game

The main mechanic of the game is managing your anxiety through breathing. Apart from that you walk around and interact with objects in the environment to complete different tasks. Every day you will also have a phone call from your mother, who you have to talk to, and try to make her understand what you are going through.

The game is inspired by and created together with my wife, Mette, who has been diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia for years, and it is a small portrait of her personal experience of living and dealing with the symptoms, stigma and emotions related to this illness. She has been a huge part of the creation of the game, and especially in what the game should show and how, as well as in the assessment of the accuracy of the experience.

The game deals with the emotions, symptoms and stigma related to schizophrenia. It conveys these to the player in a visceral way, where they feel them on themselves, to increase understanding and awareness in the player, and hopefully decrease stigma towards the illness.

The Purpose

People with Schizophrenia are often victims to a lot of stigma and misunderstanding. This can make it very hard for them to talk about what they are actually experiencing and dealing with, as they are often scared of how people will see them. Often when actually trying to express what they are experiencing, people does not understand, which was especially the case when my wife, Mette, tried to express how she was feeling and what she was experiencing to her friends and family.

Split Mind is supposed to be a voice for people like her, to show others what they are experiencing, through making the player actually experience this on themselves, feeling these emotions and experiencing these symptoms on a more visceral level, instead of on a literal level. As schizophrenia is a personal experience and not experienced in the exact same way by everyone, this game is meant as a portrait of Mette’s experience of her schizophrenia, to create a better understanding of what it actually is to others.

The game can be downloaded for free here: https://joakimcarlsen.itch.io/split-mind