Still With Me, Dear Reader?

Ever played Disco Elysium? That's probably the game that'd pop into your mind if you saw Rue Valley. Yet, to compare it to Disco Elysium undermines and reduces Rue Valley to be "like" it. It is only in spirit where they intertwine – a familiar-feeling interface, a sweet gift for words, a tragic hero to accompany you. But Rue Valley stands on its own two feet, far away from the realms of Disco's controlled insanity.

At 8:47 pm on the dot, a blinding light fires up on the horizon offscreen, scorching everything in its path and pitting the screen to black, before you're back in the shoes of Eugene Harrow, sitting in his therapist's room at 8 pm. The next 47 minutes turn into an opportunity, your opportunity to dig right into a mystery shrouded across the desolate town of Rue Valley… and forsake yourself of this loop once and for all. That is, if you can get past your own self-defeatist nature. The game is a linear experience about the quest for reason, tragedy, acceptance… wrapped together in a 47-minute in-game time slot that you’ll no doubt burn through. Over. And over. And over again. Till you've turned all the stones you could find to patch together the final truth. My record is 121 loops until the climax.

The game is not verbose. It does not paint a red nose on the quasi-complexities of human relationships and sociopolitical intricacies for gags. It does not allegorize absurdist themes across the different threads of its stories. It does not pit you with an amnesiac protagonist to figure out, as if they were under your microscope. Hell, it does not have a Seolite darling in a bomber jacket for you to appease.

Instead, it clenches us with a hero's tale that could tug at our hearts hard enough you'd swear the writers kept a watchful eye on your personal life. Thus, one could argue that Harrow is an extension of the player — me, and perhaps even you, dear reader, who's faced challenges in life that can leave them feeling tired, even broken. We see Harrow, ravaged by the serrated edges of nihilism and helplessness, continue to dwindle down the abyss, sabotaging themselves enough to fail so as to justify striving forward. And the 47-minute constraint creates the perfect microcosm to challenge the pessimist notions they carry, pitting ourselves against some strange yet familiar demons we loathe to confront.

That right there is the real story. The mystery quest he's thrust into is just enough adventure to reel us in, but not too deep that it becomes subtext; a tactic packed with strong intent on the writers' part. Rue Valley is one of the few gems that continues to push the bar for writing stories about mental health. While Disco Elysium at times caricaturizes the hero's festering abyss for us to cackle at, Rue Valley takes a more empathetic approach, offering us a chance to explore the abyss with him and drive ourselves through him to the core of its existence. This was something I resonated with. Deep. In. My. Bones.

In a time when the four walls I reside in felt like a stuffy cage, the folks I hung with felt like plastic mannequins, and the drive for my passions flickered in the turbulent winds of stress, exploring Harrow's story in Rue Valley felt akin to kneeling over a bonfire. It was a brief respite coursing through my eyes, my mind, and my body like a cool breeze in the meadows — a strong resonance bound between the player and the player-character, a phenomenon quite rare in games today.

Though it may not magically fill the void that begins to fester within most of us Over-Thirty-Somethings after eons of facing invalidation and staleness, what Rue Valley imparted through Harrow's journey is wisdom as old as time itself, reinforcing something for us to remember it by when the tough gets tougher.

Coming out of the game left me feeling just a mite validated by the fact that engaging with this dreaded loop, despite the weight of cynicism, only makes us stronger and more adept at evading the snapping jaws of the abyss. That by reaching the other side, we tell it that it holds no grip over us. That we're still standing, okay, still here.

With that in mind… I hope you're still with me, dear reader. Still pushing through your days, keeping to your goals, reaching out to folks, placing your heart before yourself, and letting go of what you can't control. If you find the times today difficult to contend with, perhaps a journey through Rue Valley could bring a semblance of connection, of groundedness, of the validation your heart seeks with the story it tells.

Even if just for a moment.

Rue Valley currently sits at Mixed reviews, a laudable story limited only by its clunky game design. With that said, I cannot recommend playing this game enough. Give it a shot, and enjoy the journey.

To those who feel they’re clinging to hope by mere threads, mental health resources are available. Check in with your local mental health clinic or hotlines, and open up to them. The developers also collaborated with Movember, a global non-profit that brings attention to mental health and men’s health. Check out their site if you’re curious to find out more.