GeorgeZBush

I apologize if this is too broad/doomer-y for this comm, but I feel like I need to post it somewhere other than a general megathread where it gets buried.

So to keep it brief, over the past year I feel like I've crossed an event horizon. What I mean is that, like the event horizon of a black hole, I've reached a point where I'm being dragged toward oblivion with no hope of escape. I've been chronically depressed for much of my life, but never to this extent where I've had genuinely episodes of what I guess you could call derealization? I feel like I'm watching a movie of my life. There are moments where I feel lightheaded and like nothing around me is real. It almost alternates between this pseudo-Buddhist detachment and terrifying existential dread about some true nature of existence or whatever.

For a while, I could keep the negativity at bay with exercise or hobbies or whatever. I was actually sort of content for a while in 2022. But during this past year, nothing, and I mean N-O-T-H-I-N-G helps. Going for a walk? Still feel miserable. Drawing? I just cannot draw anything. Exercise? Bored and tired the whole time. Games? Boring. Reading? Pointless. Hang out with friends? Boring, and they probably all hate me anyway. I constantly have this nagging feeling that I should be doing Something Else...but I have absolutely no idea what could possibly satisfy this need. Because nothing feels remotely good anymore. I cannot really convey through words just how maddeningly frustrating this is for me.

I also fucking despise my job, and I think it's a big reason for all this. It's a dumb supervisor job at a grocery store department, so it's not like it's actually hard, but it's so exhausting. Like needlessly so. I'm tired of waking up at 4AM everyday to get there at 5. I hate most of my coworkers. I loathe our customers. But it's full time and got decent enough benefits (which I really need to keep) so I'm apprehensive about finding anything else. I've thought about going back to school (I have a general studies associate's, as I had originally planned to transfer elsewhere before covid happened and derailed everything), but I have no clue what to do.

So long story short, I'm just burned the fuck out from everything in my life (there's other stuff too, but this post is long enough). And it's at the point where I don't even know where to start to fix things, because all the usual tricks don't seem to work anymore. I almost want to pull a Bilbo Baggins and just ghost everyone and go far away.

So I recently finished a hidden gem of a game called The Sea Will Claim Everything, an indie adventure game by Jonas Kyratzes, and wanted to write a quick little review to bring it some attention here. It takes place on the Fortunate Isles in the Lands of Dream, where you meet all sorts of interesting little guys - a talking tree philosopher, Socrates, a dwarf from Middle-earth, a medusa, gender-changing lizards, a druid named The, and so on. It has very charming hand-drawn artwork (done by Jonas's wife, Verena), lovely music, and is both funny and moving.

It's also very explicitly political. The Isles are gripped by an economic crisis and are ruled by corrupt mayors who all serve the interests of Lord Urizen. Austerity has been imposed and goods grow more scarce. All of the characters to some extent have something to say about the state of their world, and a lot of it is clear commentary on the real world. Kyratzes is Greek, so there's some pretty clear parallels to the Greek economic crisis, but that, of course, is but a part of the greater crisis of the 21st century, so it should resonate with anyone even vaguely anti-capitalist.

As for the gameplay, it's a basic adventure game. It's slow-paced and comfy. The controls are all click-based and can be a little awkward at times, and the game largely consists of fetch quests which can be a bit obtuse at points. However, it's not a very long game and it's not terribly difficult, and it's ultimately very much worth playing. It actually affected me in a way much like Disco Elysium - a mirror of our own decaying world inhabited by intriguing, well-written characters that tells a moving story. It's only 10 bucks on Steam so give it a shot.