Phantasmagoria is a horror game about a relationship turning sour really fast and out of the blue. There's definitely some metaphor about mental health in there somewhere

Fran Bow

Psychonauts is all about dealing with mental health issues, albeit in a completely abstract way that rarely touches on reality.

The Long Reach - is heavy on psychological horror. Characters losing touch with reality, hallucinating, going insane. An experiment on human psyche goes out of hand story.

The Oblivion expansion has a whole world themed around mental health. If you keep an eye out you can identify symptoms of certain disorders. In Mass Effect, eezo experiments can cause all sorts of psychiatric issues. There's a few missions that revolve around this theme.

I'd say the first one deals more with demonic possession. One could argue that that's some kind of metaphor, but it doesn't really fit in anywhere. The second Phantasmagoria game does, though. Isn't the main character on therapy?


I did not know this, I have the game in my library, I need to check that out! Thanks :-)

Wait, if the sanity gets too low, the game deletes your saved games? What an awful mechanic!

If you want to replay that, too, that sounds like Fran Bow.

I am not familiar with any of the games you mention, but I can point you to This war of mine-it deals with decisions that can affect the mental health of the characters. It is also an excellent game.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/this_war_of_mine

In the first one, the woman has all the tools to just leave but she decides to stick around while her spouse behaves worse and worse - until he starts trying to kill her. There are many layers to that plot

Does it *actually* delete your saves, or does it only display a message saying that your saves have been deleted? There's a big difference here.

There's one other game I can think of that claims to have deleted your save, but doesn't actually do so. (I don't think that game deals with mental health issues, however.)

Didn't play it, but remember reading that Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy also measured characters' mental state, ranging between various levels of depression, didn't it?

No, I remember playing Sanitarium, it's isometric, uses sprites, and not quite messed up enough. That one was all hand-drawn, classic sideways point and click with only but few first-person scenes.
Also not it, that one didn't really have any drug-induced fantastic creatures to speak of. But this one is a fairly good suggestion in its own right, and I haven't played it yet so might be even better, thank you.

No your game wont be deleted. Its just a mind screw that makes you think the game glitched by saying you confirmed to delete your game and you do (although it doesnt really happen) along with other such effects.

I forgot Ether One.