The Game

     

For some people, life is lived in small, cautious steps. Follow Clara as she navigates the consequences of her anxiety disorder on her thinking abilities, her work-life and her relationships. Through her discussions with her therapist and her participation in a scientific study, you will dive into the daily struggles of a person with long-term mental illness that impacts their cognitive abilities.

A note: If you can, download the native version for your OS for a smoother experience. The audio is compressed for the web version. Slower machines might also struggle with the web player.

Accessibility features

We have our heart set on lowering barriers that might stop people from playing or enjoying our game. In that spirit, Life in Small Steps was designed from the start to include a variety of accessibility features:

Play with mouse, keyboard, or controller
Play the puzzles with symbols with addition to or in place of colours
Set your text speed and size
Play the dialogues with high contrast text
Play only the narrative parts of the game, or only the puzzles
Simplify animations for visual comfort or slower machines
Remap all controls

Puzzle screen in colour-blind mode

The Team

LaChapeliere - Design and writing (lead), Art (lead), Programming
KinoxKlark - Programming (lead), Design, Art
a_sett - Music and audio (lead), Design
Purbsi - Voice acting (Psychiatrist), Proofreading
inty - Voice acting (Clara)

Special thanks to our playtesters, who helped us make this game great!

Our project makes use of the Cadman and Paulo Bitencourt fonts.

Our experience with the Safe In Our World jam

This game was created for the "Mental Health Game Dev Champions 2024" jam from Safe In Our World, in the "Small Team 25+" category. This jam had the particularity to be longer than most, with a five-month creation time.

         
Some early design work

We took this opportunity to dive into a bigger project, but also to polish our game. We appreciated being able to playtest several times with various people, hunt and solve bugs, and generally do a lot of back-and-forth on all aspects of the game.

As expected, we also encountered our fair share of challenges: mistakenly saving over recorded files, having to deal with a language which wasn't our first, struggling with our own mental health issues...

Life In Small Steps is an autofiction, a game born from personal experience, from one of the creator's life and from collected testimonies, rather than scientific research. It was a choice we felt fit the theme of the game jam, that felt like an invitation to share our stories around mental health.