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Cyclothymia shows us how to deal with a mental health issue through astrology

This is not the first time Kara Stone has talked about mental health through a videogame. Previously, she had us participate in the rituals that her doctor prescribed—taking medicine, breathing exercises, practising absolute somatic control—in MedicationMeditation. Now, with her latest game, Cyclothymia, Stone reveals how she has learned to cope with her swaying moods through astrology. Stone says that cyclothymia, the mood disorder not the game, is something that she feels and goes through. It’s generally considered a milder version of bipolar disorder, meaning that a person with it tends to have periods of euphoria that shift into episodes of…

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The Great Emoticon turns old AIM conversations into a Zelda game

If the faces of the AOL Instant Messenger conversations of yore were to attain sentience and corporeal forms, the design of the post-apocalyptic world of The Great Emoticon is arguably what that reality would look like. The trailer released by developer Hit That Switch last week looks to be another entry into the top-down action-adventure genre carved out by the earlier entries of The Legend of Zelda. The unnamed protagonist, using the all-mighty emoticon emotional energies of glad, mad and sad, must persevere through pleasantly vibrant monster designs, reminiscent of what someone thought a computer virus looked like back in the ‘90s, to…