Frame of Mind (Rubijam & Scientific Game Jam 2024)

Frame of Mind is a top-down 3D immersive experience into the interiority of a suffering person overwhelmed in the grip of disorientation, loneliness, anxiety and hallucinations. You wander through familiar corridors and look for your safe place. However, this space you thought you knew turns out to be labyrinthine, dangerous, fragile, and oppressive. Frame of Mind was made with a PhD candidate during a scientific game jam. We made aesthetics, narrative, and gameplay choices based on our skills and knowledge. To counteract a sanist perception of mental disorders that associates mental disorders with violence in video games, the team chose to highlight elements of the life of a person with mental disorders. While some elements may be associated with specific pathologies, the choice was not to mention specific diagnoses to foster empathy and understanding between people and to surpass the medical perspective.