Bringing a powerful experience of overcoming a mental struggle, be it a disorder or due to an accident, is a delicate process. Making sure to handle this attempt at a creative representation of one’s struggle with reality and remembering the pain from one’s past in order to get over it requires both care and respect. Developers Super Sexy Software, which isn’t a name I would expect a serious themed game to come from, and their publisher Deck 13 definitely showed respect for the reality of the scenario represented in The Shattering.

Story

John Evans is a man trying to put together fragments of his past and present within his mind. Experiencing memories that have been lost proves to be a dangerous one as his path becomes twisted with fake memories to shelter him from the truth. With only the help of his Doctor’s voice, John must decipher what is reality and what is fantasy.

Gameplay

Just as a true experience game should be, this game only really gives you the ability to move around by either walking or running and the ability to interact with specific things in your surroundings. The game will open pathways and help you make progress with aspects you aren’t supposed to do yourself once you have completed various actions that trigger new events.

You can find what items you are supposed to interact with thanks to the color difference in the game’s visuals. While the majority of this game is black and white, key items and aspects will have a faint or bright color to make it stand out. There are times that it doesn’t stick out too much, so be sure to be observant of your surroundings and read the clues when they are given to you.

As you proceed through the game you will be presented with choices for various situations. These choices will change the way certain moments unfold. All pathways do end up coming to the same conclusion, but the way you get there will be personalized by your choices, so be sure to be honest and not just pick anything if you want to experience this game properly.

The game is pretty straight forward when it comes to the gameplay honestly, but that helps the player focus more on the experience the game is providing. It reminds me of playing games like Layers of Fear, only instead of horror, you are faced with drama and a sense of anxiety.

Visuals

Even with most of the world void of color, this game presents a beautiful and elaborate scenery with a mostly white atmosphere filled with splashes of color. There are some scenes that have color in them and even these are nice. The most interesting aspect is the lack of character models throughout the game despite having animations and focus to prove there are characters being represented. This aspect definitely aided the experience where I think having character models might have actually hindered it.

Sounds

Mixing together moments of silence with moments of music brought out scenes in ways that were atmospherically telling. Having the choice to turn radios or TV’s on and off let us control the way we felt through each scene and using sound effects to bring out moments was a nice touch. I doubt any of the songs and movie clips you can find throughout the game were arbitrarily placed, yet you left it up to the players to watch, listen, or ignore these pieces.

Replayability

Other than finding out the way your different choices will affect your playthrough experience, there isn’t much reason to go through the game after you reach the ending and have your realization moment.

What Could Be Better

Some scenes were annoyingly difficult to find the trigger to keep the story progression moving forward. I would suggest making the items you have to interact with always shine bright in a color that contrasts the surface it is on. I’m not mentioning these for moments like the back room near the end or even the hotel room, but more for like when we are supposed to find a tiny piece of glass that barely glows a color that mostly blends with the background.

Conclusion

The Shattering provides an unforgettable experience! Going through a broken mind is a sensitive subject matter and it was handled respectfully. With well-designed levels and a properly written story, this game is neither too long nor too short. I would even say that this was a necessary experience to show how strongly one can be affected by False Memory Syndrome.