Significant spoilers ahead.
In my experience, many works fail at depicting depression and mental illness, either completely misunderstanding or misrepresenting it or bombarding the viewer with walls of text in an egregious violation of 'show, don't tell'. Similarly, I'm not fond of most "walking simulators", as they often fail to replace compelling game mechanics or a game-driven narrative with something else to chew on: an interesting story, wondrous set pieces, or simply thought-provoking ideas.
And then there's Life Tastes Like Cardboard, a walking simulator so visceral and personal that it perfectly captures the essence of severe mental illness.
Visual abstraction is a powerful tool in achieving this aim. In many chapters, the game has frenetic, childlike art, which may feel offputting at first, but grows on you quickly. The errant pixelated strokes, vague depictions of space and broken perspective and abstract horrors perfectly reflect the neuroses of the artist. This is exhibited right away in the start, where a dreary grey realm closest to 'reality' transforms into a compressed mishmash of familiar dreary set pieces from the lecture hall and the unkempt apartment. The opening act is perhaps the most blunt of these visual metaphors, but it's apt: daily life literally blurs into a meaningless grey continuity of just existing, momentarily broken by the discordant refuge of digital entertainment. You're alive, but not living, existing in a stasis of shambolic obligations of work or school, subsisting on fast food and slumping into a computer chair passively watching the same dozen youtube videos and netflix shows for a dubious dopamine response that grows weaker by the day.
That's just the opening. As the real world and Jon's implied memories, experiences and mental state blend into a mix of dream, mood-altered perception and metaphor, we find other tactful explorations of social anxiety and depression, including:
-An unnerving moment where a glass path in an art museum puts Jon on display in a transparent box as an 'art piece', as passerbys wander forward and ogle him.
-Traversing a labyrinth and encountering a maze without a solution, forcing Jon to backtrack to another impossible maze that he simply phases through to complete the level.
-Bookstores full of peculiar, evolving titles on the shelves, with an attendant who constantly verbally accosts Jon to leave the premises.
-An esoteric and confusing 'museum', each with its own unique rules, most notably one where it would literally take infinite time to traverse to the other side of the room.
-A distorted village that flips the camera, revealing previously unseen, and often horrifying new things.
-The therapist is a cardboard cutout, and has nothing meaningful to reply with despite Jon's engagement with him.
-Jon's sprite often evolves based on the aesthetic of the current chapter, and often in a meaningfully representative way.
This is the essence of showing not telling. And for all the dialogue that does exist in the game (and there's plenty of it), it continues to give us a window into Jon's mind without the exposition ever getting too clumsy. The sessions with Rem grant small insights into Jon's past and present, ranging from subtle hints, to more descriptive explorations of the sources and nature of his anxiety. Jon's conversations with Ollie are also insightful and relatable: awkward pleasantries on gentle topics that somehow evolve into deeper conversation, akin to how I made friends back when I understood how to do so.
One might argue Jon's confession to Ollie in his home, or the Sick Enough arcade cabinet may have done the previous tactful encounters with Ollie and Rem a disservice, but given both are situated near the end of the game, rather than a tedious monologue, it comes off as brutal reckoning that drops the pretense of implication for an explicit confrontation with accumulated thoughts, many of which are frighteningly resonant with myself.
I guess this is all to say that Life Tastes Like Cardboard is effective when its being blunt and when its being subtle.
Interestingly, Life Tastes Like Cardboard was well designed around player experience in subtle ways. For instance, in the Sick Enough arcade game, the distance covered is always just enough for the text to be written out and read by the player, wasting no time. Its a subtle bit of excellent user experience so effective that you don't even notice it unless you pay attention. Similarly, the game tactically accelerates the introductory chapters without sacrificing the message, truncating the protracted trip from the bedroom to the classroom by the third outing, which in it of itself has metaphorical value in terms of how the world is perceived by a depressed individual: time blurs in this gray world.
A highly visual experience feels wasted without a proper soundtrack, and Life Tastes Like Cardboard has an excellent one. The somber guitar in Class I-III evolves beautifully into Jon's Theme, the main melody practically wailing in anguish as you explore a deteriorating reality terminating in a steady, heavy-hearted, low key rhythm. The Most Important Thing dances about in melancholic wonder, making you feel as though you're touching upon something sacred, nostalgic and beautiful as you collect journal-like memories. Most strikingly, the sickening murmurs of Drama and Drama II accompany exploration of a desert of vagrants and a decrepit hospital of static and death, before culiminating in a jaw-dropping crescendo in Drama III, where in the Dental Ward, victims and monsters writhe in real and imagined atrocities, depicted as if transcribed with a marker in the quivering hands of an innocent child. This escalation, music-wise, constitutes 19 minutes of continual evolution that invokes a similar soul-wrenching despair I'd hear on a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album.
Intriguing visuals, evolving set pieces, easter eggs and excellent, fitting music are all great, but my appreciation for this project wouldn't be so intense for it if it weren't for the last aspect: how deeply personal the project seems to be.
This notion is hinted at. X's are used to tastefully redact certain information, such as Jonathan's last name, or the names of bands that appeal to him. Moreover, the creator himself has stated that the game is semi-autobiographical, which admittedly is almost alarming given revalations of two family suicides, a children's book with a brutal progression and the final whimper of the climax: plain white text on a black rectangle implying a most tragic outcome.
Why is it that I can empathize so strongly with some of the content here? Why is it that the dialogue feels so real? Why is it that my heart drops as I enter the Dental Ward? Why do some of the lines in Sick Enough hurt so badly? Why is it that the dancing colors of Ollie's realm fill me with the same solace, despair and wonder as a powerful memory where I biked miles from my college campus, to find an endless sea of languishing suburbs, sparse woods and plains, indescribable beauty and hope dancing hand-in-hand sorrow and nostalgia?
It's because of how personal this game is. It is frighteningly intimate. I became most clearly aware of this in the chapter of Ollie's visit, exploring files on Jon's computer. Bravely and vunerably, Demensa had given us a window into his world, a rich glimpse into one's inner life so close I feel as if I'm an intruder stepping into a sanctuary lost to the ages. Despite social anxiety, individual people are a fascination to me: it's a wonder to think that on a busy street, immediately around you, hundreds of people are living their lives. Their complicated, unique story had momentarily intersected with mine, and perhaps never again. What were their experiences like? What brought them to this moment? Peering through old pieces of Jon's (or Demensa's) art, photos from two decades ago and fragments of music, I had found an answer to that question that I never had before, vicariously exploring another person's life in a way I'm not sure I'll ever experience again.
This intimacy lends not only credence, but authenticity to these cathartic representations of Demensa's experiences, and by extension, the fundamental experience of depression, anxiety and mental illness. And to his credit, he also understands that mental illness isn't an all absorbing monster. It is a shadow that recedes, lunges, persists and fades; the darkness waxes and wanes. There are bright spots. The grassy field upon which Jon first encounters Ollie is punctuated by the chiptune march Track and Field that brims with momentum and hope. Whatever Comes To Mind, a wandering, comfortable and distinctly 'video game' tune reminiscent of comfortable blanket-couch titles like Animal Crossing accompanies a loveable sequence where Ollie and Jon hold pleasant conversation. The almost heaven-like pencil-on-paper look of Ollie's visit to Jon's apartment, accompanied with the glowing, atmospheric Is It Really Me returns us to an almost angelic solace contrasting the nightmarish conclusion of the previous chapter. And of course, the mesmerizing black hole Sunset of Ollie's world, set to his theme, a warm guitar that explodes into a lo-fi cathartic melody and breaking waves that in potent sorrow, reaffirms the delicate joy that is being alive.
What links these bright moments are a pervasive melancholy, often implied through the music itself and gameplay-wise through the impermanence of each chapter. In sparse few chapters do we find genuine joy, or at least, clarity, support or calmer contemplation is afforded. These moments are noticeable (in game, and in real life), and are cherished. But as always, we can't seem to linger in these spaces forever. The clock turns, our minds do awful things, the world changes, and we're thrown back into a frightening unknown. Jon says it best in his confession to Ollie: "I know I'm going to have to leave soon and I-I'm scared, Ollie. I don't want to leave."
Because when we leave, what can await us is frightening. The all-consuming climax opens with a distorted realm, reminiscent of the one from the opening chapter, only this time, Rem and his office are the recurring motif, rather than the classroom and apartment, accented, by dismaying, erratic red streaks. The musical introduction is meandering, almost directionless, settling upon radio static-like harmonies before erupting into an extremely loud, distorted repetition of that interlude as the terrain shifts and distorts violently. Jon's sprite is literally falling apart. Scathing, mocking commentary is offered by the monstrous Rems. Somewhere in the distance, the cadence wails once more like a dying bird. Cruel visions of death and suicide line the path, which becomes hard to navigate. The track stutters and thrashes, returns to a miserable melody reminiscent of Pigmented Triad (which preceded this scene) before finally settling on an uneasy repetition. The pain of loss has hit Ollie hard, and the heartbreak moment in The Quiet Kitten makes a reappearance. The music's repetition continues as more static and noise builds, each step getting harder to take, the pain of existence accumulating, the heavier it all becomes until...
'I'm so sorry and I understand if you can't forgive me.'
...
As someone who has idealized his own suicide once, I'd like to think Demensa meaningfully made sure not to end the game with that sentence as the last word. The cardboard of Rem's room falls away, and Jon sits down with Ollie (holding hands, if you've done your due diligence). The fact that Demensa, is still making art to this day on his Twitter is a thankful reminder that this project is not a beautifully elaborate suicide note, but a cathartic exploration of the furthest depths of depression, how it distorts one's perception of the world, and most importantly, the precious people and moments of hope and wonder that help us keep fighting through it.