What is Thread

Thread is a game about PTSD. It is a walking simulator that puts the player in the shoes of someone with PTSD. It is meant to show U.S. Veterans that they are not alone. It is also meant to show the loved ones of someone with PTSD a small glips into the world of PTSD.

Thread takes place in surreal mind space. The player will experience things like hyperarousal, miscommunication, addiction, suicide, and escapism. Thread will show the journey of the character through addiction and loneliness eventually ending up joining a community and finding peace. This game is NOT meant to be a therapy game it is meant to bring light to a problem the plagues my community.

I was the design lead and project lead of a team of about 10 people. I, unfortunately, stopped development after my graduation. Realizing that I had was not ready to make a full game about it yet. Eventually, I want to develop and release Thread.

The good news there is a Twine game I created with another developer.

Process of my design

Designing is so interesting to me. The ability to create mechanics to get certain emotions out of a player is something that I am for in my development. The entire purpose of Thread is to evoke emotions and try to create empathy for people with PTSD.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is very common in my peer group of combat veterans. From my experience thought this journey I found that there are common things that veterans do. I wanted to speak to that commonality and create something for my community.

I got the idea of Thread after I played “the Beginner’s Guide” by Everything Unlimited Ltd.. This game had so many emotions and it blew my mind so many times, I found that walking simulators would be a great way to show the journey thought PTSD.

The idea was to create mechanics to simulate what a person with PTSD does. We created an anxiety mechanic that is off-putting to the player enough so that they were uncomfortable. This allowed us to layer a “game” on top of that mechanic. The games we put on top of that were similar in nature but showed different aspects of hypervigilance through the eyes of a veteran. The “games” were find the sniper, find the bomb, and find the terrorist.

Find the sniper the player had to look in the windows of a building on a city block and find the snipers. However, when the player found the sniper the sniper was just a person doing mundane tasks.

Find the bomb the player had to stare at trash piles walking down the street to make sure that there are not IED. After the player checks the trash it is just a mundane item.

Find the terrorist the player is in a crowded area and the character starts seeing terrorists all around them. Eventually, the player can’t check fast enough, and checking doesn’t actually turn the NPCs back into normal people. So the character’s anxiety goes so high that the players only escape from the anxiety mechanic is to leave the crowd. This shows that anxiety forces veterans to miss opportunities.

After the player leaves, they appear at their desk opening a new suicide note from a fellow soldier. The world dissolves into an infinite dark place where suicide notes are objects. The player goes up to a note and it reads in the fellow soldier’s voice. This shows the loss of veterans most of us know at least one person that has committed suicide.

This is as far as we got for my senior project.

There are plans for more.