Looking For A Depressing Time? Try Playing The Joy Division Video Game

I seem to remember an X-Files episode, though it may have been another sci-fi show, from the early 1990s about teens committing suicide because they played video games. EVIL video games, what with their videoing and gaming. It was typical alarmist stuff — though if the game in question had been Will Love Tear Us Apart?, based on the Joy Division song “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” I would have totally believed it.

Sh*t’s dark. Via Consequence of Sound:

Will Love Tear Us Apart?, based off the band’s titular classic, is a “browser-game about relationships on the brink of breaking up,” following the song “in delivering a dark and frustrating perspective on love, (with) each verse in the song represented by a level in the game.”

Creator/writer Gordon Calleja wanted to “crea[te] interesting tensions in the design process, resulting in scenarios which deliver the desired thematic experience whilst going against what is conventionally considered good game design.” The developers added, “What guides this game is an ambition to frustrate, upset and sting the player into remembering the dark days preceding the death of a relationship.” (Via)

I haven’t slit my wrists because of video game since playing Elf Bowling 1 & 2, so it’s ’bout time.

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