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Format: Unity, browser, other platforms
Price: Free
Release Date: Beta release currently available, full release mid-2014
Target Age Group: children & teens
Developer: LinkedWellness / University of Aukland
Genre: twitch-click, puzzle
Players may travel to a fantasy world, but they'll learn Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques that can make a difference to their lives in this world.
Price: Free
Release Date: Beta release currently available, full release mid-2014
Target Age Group: children & teens
Developer: LinkedWellness / University of Aukland
Genre: twitch-click, puzzle
Overview
Two years ago, brainsforgames reported on some promising findings in the British Medical Journal: the team behind the game SPARX had shown that therapy provided through their game been just as effective in treating teens with mild depression as conventional treatments. But this awesome news had one small catch, SPARX seemed to be only available to participants of the study.
Happily, that's changed now and SPARX is headed for a mainstream release before the end of this year. Even better news: there's also currently a freely-available beta version now online at sparx.linkedwellness.com. Eager to see what this newest tool in the battle against depression had to offer, I decided to check SPARX out.
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The Depressive Spiral |
SPARX excels in explaining CBT techniques clearly and in providing examples of how these techniques could be easily applied in the course of a player's everyday life. Every level of the game is bookended with a counseling session of sorts with a Guide who explains a new CBT technique and helps players review previously learned techniques. During the levels themselves, players take control of a customized avatar in a generic high-fantasy game world and work their way through various puzzles designed to reinforce the material introduced by the Guide.
Gameplay
Each level in SPARX has a tutorial section, where the Guide explains the fundamentals of various CBT techniques, and a "game world" section, which seems designed to resemble a kind of World of Warcraft or Runescape style world. But unlike those games, there's not very much to do in the world of SPARX, and it shows.
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Generic fantasy setting? Check. Shirtless beefcake warriors? Check. |
However, the weak story is only one of the problems of the game world of SPARX. The much bigger problem is that from start to finish, SPARX is simply not fun.
The lesson sections led by the Guide aren't very game-like at all. Players listen to the Guide explain techniques and answer the occasional true false question or asked to rate their mood over a particular period of time, but the lessons are not very interactive. The Guide's immediate response vary somewhat, but by and large, the script continues on its course no matter a player answers. In these sections, there's nothing that SPARX does in terms of engaging the player that other, non-interactive formats couldn't also easily replicate.
But if the tutorial sections can be forgiven for being a bit textbook-like, the sad truth is that the game world sections of SPARX aren't any more entertaining. The world lacks challenge, choice, exploration, or adventure. Players are asked to complete the simplest of tasks and puzzles in a world that is nothing more than a long corridor--one path that inexorably leads to the end of the level. There is no ability to explore or discover, and even your one means of interacting with the world, your Staff of the Ancients that fires energy orbs at a enemies--even this can only be used in scripted moments. The result is that there's no opportunity whatsoever for players to immerse themselves in the world of SPARX. It's a barren, boring world from start to finish.
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Icicles keep falling through my head... |
I understand that in a game about combatting depression, it would be a cruel joke to make the difficulty so great that players find themselves constantly frustrated. However, games are only fun when they scaffold learning in a way that lets players feel themselves getting better at a task, or when they can see goals that were once unreachable suddenly be within their grasp. A game that presents no challenge whatsoever feels like busywork rather than a fun reward.
Educational Content
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Do not let my large biceps distract you. |
As I mentioned above, the lessons with the Guide are not very interactive, but there are nevertheless some nice touches. Players are provided with an in-game "notebook" which they are prompted to customize. This allows them to set goals for themselves that are most appropriate to their life and current emotional needs.
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I'd like to buy a vowel, please. |
Overall, the content provided by SPARX is useful and reliable, and the game-like format could easily be seen as more accessible to some kids and teens than a textbook or a video, although it's not exactly presented in a particularly fun manner.
Conclusion
The educational content in SPARX is rock-solid, and for people coping with mild depression who have never encountered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy before, SPARX provides a great introduction to reliable therapeutic techniques. Moreover, by putting this content in game format, I have no doubt that SPARX will be able to get kids and teens with depression or social anxiety to consider CBT, even if they wouldn't be willing or able to discuss it with a flesh-and-blood counsellor or consult a medical website. And even for kids who don't suffer from depression but want to gain insight into how others who do suffer from depression might be controlled by their negative thoughts, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend SPARX.
That being said, there's also no denying that as a game, SPARX tends to fall flat. It's not particularly fun or interesting, and most of the important educational content is actually imparted through dialog with the Guide, rather than through the gameplay experience itself. The game is a good enough that it can be reasonably played through to the end without too much frustration or difficulty, I would guess that people who do play through to the end are only motivated by a desire to learn all the therapeutic techniques. The game itself isn't enjoyable enough to encourage uninterested persons to keep playing.
Still, I can't say that SPARX is disappointing. It's not a great game, but it is a great proof-of-concept that critical mental health issues can be useful tackled through the medium of video games. If there's any disappointment to be hard, I'd say it's with the larger, big-budgeted studios and producers in the video game industry who, as yet, seem to have no interest in applying their skills as great game designers and marrying them with the kind of meaningful content found in SPARX. After all, nearly every video game has a story line about struggling to overcoming adversity, and the recent release from game publishing giant Ubisoft, Child of Light, had refreshing coming-of-age themes instead of the all-too-common gritty, hard-boiled hero. In my mind, it's not a far leap from a game like Child of Light to making a commercially viable, fun game that takes some conventional wisdom about video game play mechanics and intertwines those with the kind of powerful real-life lessons about overcoming the mental adversity found in SPARX.
It's worth noting that there are some bugs in this pre-release version. The game crashed completely on me once, and sometimes events were slow to trigger even after I had successfully completed a task. Also, at the moment there is no way to save your progress through the game, so you'll either have to play through the entire game at once or leave it running in the background if you want to access all the lessons. None of these issues should discourage people from giving the game a try, just that players should be aware of the current known limitations of the beta release.
Cons: Totally linear. Uninspired graphics. Not especially fun.
Score: B-
Have you given SPARX a try? Leave a comment and share your experiences!
Hey there Rachel! Great review.. my friend ask me to try this thing out and what he told me is a bit bias and one sided. So I look for review before trying this game out.. thanks for all the words. I will post my own opinion in this game in my blog, click here
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Mario