itch.io

Sorry if the title seemed to be biting off more than the little game itself does. Hush is just a refinement of a 200-word RPG contest entry that I gave a layout to. I wanted to use the short word limit to make something that tried to balance a need to connect with deadly limitations on one's ability to communicate. I guess, when framing it like that, the metaphor you're looking for is there, but barely. It works more broadly, I think, as an analog for any situation where someone wants to connect but is impeded from doing so, whether from within or without. A project directly addressing the massive ongoing mental health crisis in America is, unfortunately, a task beyond my experience and skills.

To be more precise, the constant march of gun violence in America is a nexus of many interconnected issues, including the lack of accessible mental health services, which itself exacerbates the many other causes, such as extreme social and economic stress and alienation, structural racism and individual prejudice, patriarchy and toxic masculinity, general and specific disenfranchisement, easy access to firearms, gaps in education and empathy, political powerlessness, the dismantling and destruction of community, the devaluation of life in general (and the role that the violence of police and incarceration play in that), etc.  The various and dynamic causes are part of the reason why the issue is so difficult to tackle, second only, maybe, to the complete lack of will among the powerful to actually change anything.