Escape your psychosis

Escape your Psychosis is an illustrated CYOA booklet about escaping the cycle of psychosis by recognising and avoiding the unhealthy choices. The format allows you to click on the option to process through the story. The text is accompanied by whimsical illustrations, relevant to the state of the story. The entry is meant to be educational.

This very short entry is the product of the author’s experience with psychosis in their surroundings, wanting to spread awareness and demystify what it means to fall into a psychosis. Through short snippets of situations, the entry takes a light-hearted, often humourous, approach to the theme. Still, it recognises that this is not a situation-fits-all type of content.

For what it tries to do, I think the game manages to do quite well. It provides enough variety and choices to make it feel believable, but brushes over the more darker elements of going through a psychosis to not make it a bummer (the illustrations* are a big help in this way). However, this can also be seen as what doesn’t work about the entry, with how over-simplistic the game tackles the subject matter, or how it overlooks completely the darker realities, or how too cheerful the entry looks for what it tries to portray. It can feel a bit superficial.
*they reminded me a bit of the Little Inferno game style…

I’d love to see more CYOA entries in a similar format in future comps!