I want them to mean something, too.
Constance’s store page on Steam insists its titular heroine, the one with a flappy cloak, slender weapon, and impeccable animation, is more than just another Hornet. This is a game set in «a colorful but decaying inner-world, created by her declining mental health» where I can «Experience playable flashbacks about personal struggle, creativity, work-life-balance, and inner purpose.»
I’m not convinced something with boss health bars that lets me pogo-jump over spikes is the best way to explore such topics, but I am intrigued. A Short Hike managed to combine a cute adventure with personal growth and deep, touching concerns for others. Vampire Therapist does a masterful job mixing very serious and very human issues into a ridiculous and often genuinely funny tale. Celeste’s tough climb is expertly interwoven with a moving story of depression and anxiety, and all the struggles that go with it.
Which is why several hours later I’m helping a silent Constance paint a picture during one of the game’s surprisingly rare flashbacks. No matter what colors I pick or where I place them, every sketch and stroke seems to be wrong. A neglected plant sits in the background. Once this interactive depression session’s over I get back to leaping about a colorful world, and this frictionless and uncommented memory is never, ever, brought up again.
Hoping all of this professed meaning has perhaps been packed into the game’s monsters instead, I start playing close attention to everything I see. I have been promised «enemies and characters representing different aspects of her psyche and personal history», after all. That’s basically Silent Hill territory, and I am all for poring over tiny little freaks packed with symbolism.
I get a walking bunch of keys with goop on them instead. They wander back and forth and do absolutely nothing else—such as run off and hide the way I’m sure my real-life keys do whenever I go looking for them—when I try to approach.
The enemies that follow are if anything even worse.
