You head to work and try to manoeuvre frustrating bosses and awkward social interactions with fellow employees before heading home to eat, maybe get some down time and sleep. Waking on a Monday, you eat and shower before setting out for work at a certain time. You must remember to eat, sleep, go to work, socialise with colleagues and shower, the kind narrator reminds you. You start the game with the working week looming ahead. They still affect your choices but you aren't quite sure where you are mentally. The experience mode - perhaps the best approach - has you play with mental fortitude numbers which cannot be seen. In the game mode, you see the mental fortitude numbers and the choices you make are affected by them. In the story, you play with the game without mental fortitude numbers and being able to make any choices you wish. Please Knock on My Door has three different game modes: the story, the game or the experience. A pointed lesson in how you can't run from your problems forever. You can either face them head on and receive a decrease in your immediate mental fortitude score, but a short-term increase overall, or avoid them altogether - though they'll come back again later. Say your character has some difficult memories. Some choices increase or decrease your immediate mental fortitude, while others give you an overall buff or debuff.
Numbers reflect your mental health and impact what choices you can make throughout the game.
Your main obstacle is managing your mental fortitude. I wasn't prepared for how emotionally challenging it would be. While doing so there's a narrator who seems to reflect your inner-most thoughts and feelings - both good and bad.Īs someone with first-hand experience of the issues at hand, I didn't quite know what to expect with Please Knock on My Door. Each day is a struggle as you balance work, social life and your own mental health. This top-down adventure from Swedish developer Michael Levall puts you into the shoes of someone experiencing depression and social anxiety. Please Knock on My Door doesn't let you shy away from these feelings, but makes you face them head on. Have you ever had that voice in your head which tells you that your friends don't like you? That nagging feeling people would be better off without you? Or that you are a failure in work? Thoughts and feelings we find ourselves trying to suppress but which still raise their ugly heads time and time again.
Please Knock on My Door effectively encompasses the isolation and strain those who experience depression go through on a day-to-day basis.