Please Knock On My Door

Review

What is absolutely staggering is that one out of ten people world-wide is suffering from depression. That means that 350 million of us (based on the 2015 statistics) are not feeling their true selves, are probably questioning everything they do on a daily basis, and constantly feeding themselves with negativity. Some people can hide it very well, while others are totally paralysed by it and have no desire to do anything at all.  Any way you might look at it, it is a mental illness that can bring an individual to the lowest point in their life, and it can be triggered by so many events, even long after they have occurred. In Please Knock on My Door, experience two weeks in the life of one individual who suffered from depression.

Please Knock On My Door is, to me, more an educational experience rather than a game, as such. It displays a rich story of a person who is going through a really tough patch in his own life and is questioning the point of his own existence.

First, I would like to tip my hat to the developer for having the courage to tackle the very difficult subject of depression, based on his own personal experience. Many of us might know somebody who is in this exact predicament, and sometimes it is a lot closer than we think. Please Knock On My Door might help you to recognize and understand symptoms in someone close to you, or even yourself!

Essentially, the game will take place in two locations; at the character’s apartment and at his workplace. In the apartment, the protagonist will be able to enter the kitchen, bathroom and living room, where he can interact with a few objects that will either raise or decrease his mental well-being. By the way, at the start of the game you can choose whether or not you want to know how the points system works. If you decide to choose the full experience, all mental points will be hidden and you won’t know which actions will raise or decrease your morale. If you decide to play the story, it will show you how the system works. As you interact with some of the objects, text will appear on the screen giving you two options, which again will raise or decrease your morale according to the choice you make. On other occasions a deep narrative voice will amplify a point (you know that voice in your head?).  At work, your character will experience awkward situations which will also alter his mental well-being.

It will take you between one to three hours to complete a play-through and depending on which decisions you’ll make, you’ll experience different endings, which is good in terms of re-playability.

The graphics and the soundtrack are appropriate and enhance the heavy atmosphere that the game portrays. I would have liked to have the same type of gameplay at the office as there is at home. It needed more interaction at the office, such as narrative when our character might be closer to the boss’s room, for example.