‘The Longest Walk’ is a Personal Reflection on a Difficult Mental State
The Longest Walk is a thoughtful and emotional story about struggling with mental health and trying to figure out what to do to continue living.
CONTENT WARNING: DEPRESSION, SELF-HARM
This game is more emotional, focusing on the words with minimal visuals to lead you around. Throughout it, you are moving forward, walking through various scenes and places. These different places feel fragmented, but also look very realistic, creating the feeling of being inside a memory.
This story is both written on the screen and told through emotional audio. as the game was created by editing an hour long interview that the developer had done with their own father who shared his own story. I cannot begin to imagine what an emotional experience that would have been and how strong their relationship must be for their father to be able to talk about such personal feelings so openly.
The Longest Walk feels deeply personal (unsurprisingly) as you listen to the state of mind this person was in. The fears and negative thoughts that were on his mind. How he slowly parted ways with his friends, his hobbies, and anything that made him feel human. The aim of this experience is to help promote talking about mental health, and it’s a game that I feel people would talk about due to the personal nature of the story that can be found in it. There aren’t really goals beyond moving forward and experiencing the story, but that allows you to focus on the core of the story and what it means for you, as long as you are in the right frame of mind yourself. The emotion throughout this game can be heard in the narrator’s voice, and the broken, memory-like environment feels like you are there with him, listening and, hopefully, understanding.
The Longest Walk is available now on Steam.
