Trauma Review

The human brain is too limited to comprehend pure reality. (The pure reality of a dust speck is billions of atoms all interacting with each other. Can you mentally keep track of all of them at once?) So instead we make a mental description of our perceptions. That dust speck becomes the “Tiny Floating Thing Which Makes Other Things Dirty.” And that might be as deep as our understanding goes.

What happens when the database of perceptions in our brain becomes scrambled by drugs? We might smell colors or hear motion. What happens when our brain is damaged by physical trauma?

Trauma is the story of a young lady who suffers a head injury in a car accident. We enter her dreams and help her resolve conflicts so as to aid in her recovery.

The game is a short, simple, but quite clever independent work. It incorporates no less than three unusual features not normally found in games.

First, all of the graphics are photographs of the real world. Some of them have been “photoshopped” to add a dream-like surrealism, but there is little 3D modeling or artwork. There are also live video cut scenes.

Second, the game uses an innovative movement system. As you move your cursor around the screen, blurred blocks will appear and vanish. These quadrilaterals represent what will fill your screen should you click on them. You can see examples of these in the screen shots (one is quite small. Can you find it?) I really preferred this system to the classic Cursor-Turns-Into-Arrow. I always knew where I was going and what direction I would be facing. I never lost my sense of direction.

And finally, you can paint commands on the screen. For example, the vertical line in the one screen shot is the command to Move Back.

While the blurred previews appear to help you flow with the dream, the drawn commands allow you some measure of control. For example, using the Turn Around command might show you a view which had no blurred path leading to it. Some commands allow you to interact with the environment.

The game consists of four dreams which can be experienced in any order. Each dream has a main ending, three alternative endings and nine photographs to find. Complete a main ending and you are rewarded with a live video cut scene of the lady and her doctor. Complete an alternative ending and you will be given some insight into the lady’s character. The photographs reveal commands and childhood memories. Solving all four endings for a dream turns on a hint system to help find the rest of the photos in that dream. Solving all four main endings gives you the closing video.

And that is it. Trauma is short and simple, but atmospheric and addictive. On the one hand, I was able to finish it in just over two hours of playing time. On the other hand, I never wanted to solve more than two endings at a sitting (I would them contemplate and absorb what I had experienced). So it lasted me about as long as a full sized game. Your mileage may vary.

I will close by saying that the voice acting was excellent and the price was cheap – a mere $7 on Steam. The game play is innovative, but the innovation was not a gimmick. It actually enhanced the experience. This is the work of an independent artist and I could find no fault with it. If you like adventure games, then this game deserves a place on your hard drive, the author deserves your support and the game deserves an “A”.

System Requirements:

PC

• OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7
• Processor: 2.0 GHz Dual Core
• Memory:2 GB RAM
• DirectX®:5.0
• Hard Drive:200 MB HD space

MAC

• OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or later
• Processor: 2.0 GHz Dual Core
• Memory:2 GB RAM
• Hard Drive:200 MB HD space