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YMMV / Depression Quest

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  • Audience-Alienating Premise: The idea of a game that's designed to not be fun and has minimal interactivity is a turn-off for a lot of people, even when including those who are into "art" games. That's not even getting into the fact that the game is about the harsh and controversial topic of struggling with depression.
  • Broken Base:
    • People either agree that what's depicted in the game is pretty realistic with regards to the sort of things actual depressed people actually go through, or disagree and say that this game does not do its subject matter justice whatsoever.
    • There's also a lot of debate on whether the minimalistic nature of the mechanics are a creative approach to the subject matter or whether it hurts it because of barely qualifying as a game.
    • Quinn's decision to leave out a Driven to Suicide ending due to not wishing to trigger people. Either perfectly OK and respectful, or that it is unrealistic, and ignores an important struggle that many depressed individuals have to deal with.
  • Cliché Storm: Has been accused of this by some detractors, primarily for how they perceive the game's approaches to the issues and complications with depression as being simplistic or too obvious.
  • Critical Dissonance: The game has received mostly positive reception from reviewers on gaming sites, while player reception is relatively mixed to negative at best.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: This game is mostly remembered for sparking Gamergate after an ex-boyfriend of Quinn's claimed (falsely) that they had slept with a critic in exchange for a positive review, the online backlash that resulted from that, and the massive debate about sexism, gender roles, diversity and journalistic integrity in the gaming industry that resulted from that. Even to this day, the effects of Gamergate still seep into wider pop culture and American politics, and the topic is extremely controversial.

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