At home, his best efforts to cheer his mother are thwarted. When away from home, Louis will hide his feelings from the world. If you are living, or ever have lived, with a loved one with severe depression, there are several story beats that will slam into your emotions with immense force. Whereas the few mainstream games that tackle mental illness, such as Hellblade, tend to put the player in the shoes of the person with the illness, Ghost Giant offers an outside perspective. The colors got a little bit warmer, and we suddenly had more countryside instead of just rowdy streets”. “A bit more melancholy, calm, cute setting. “I thought, when we tried putting together a mood board of French picturesque small towns, and old cars and clothing, it just really clicked better with the story,” says Olov Redmalm, Creative Director and Art Director. The setting meanwhile changed from a small American town to a French one, as the color scheme in place reminded Elfgren of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, a 1960s musical.

That made me think about Ghost Giant I got thinking what the story could be, and what he was hiding”.

“I was very moved by one of the stories in that article about a young boy who was taking care of his siblings when he was just a very small child himself. “I read this article about children who grew up with addicts as parents, and how they very often have to take on responsibility from a very early age,” Elfgren says. Sara Elfgren, an established author and screenwriter making her videogame debut with the Ghost Giant script, explains where the idea came from.

A radical change in direction (and setting) quickly took place once a writer was on board, however. The initial Ghost Giant prototype was set in a small American town, and the main character, Louis – at this point named Ned, and a bat rather than a cat – was being bullied. This nuance is precisely why it works so well. Indeed, it initially appears to be little more than a standard cutesy VR adventure and even after the struggles of the main character’s mother become apparent, jokes are made and most characters remain oblivious to her situation. It’s not a game that constantly discusses depression.

Ghost Giant is, as we made clear in our full review, a remarkable game that handles the subject of depression with skill and care.

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