Game Review: Trauma (PC)

Trauma is not really a game, its more of an abstract interactive emotional experience which I think gamers will find very hard to sit on the fence with. You will either love it for its complete abstract nature and its intentional open end approach or hate it because the games enjoyment comes from you forming your own ideas about what’s going on and the very simple gameplay is not the main focus of Trauma.

Trauma revolves around a woman whose just had a car accident and her parents have been killed, although its never really explained that that’s really the case. The game is broken down into four dream states which have a specific puzzle or end goal to achieve. The game graphics are presented by photos that join together by clicking on edges that motion blur off the side of the screen. In these photos are 36 Polaroids to find which give you background snippets on the character and the situation in general. You flick between the game screens by drawing symbols on the screen which would work perfectly with touch screens but work fine with a mouse.

That is essentially it.

However where Trauma exceeds other games of this type of indie experience genre (such as dinner date) is that the production values are high, there is a small amount of gameplay to be had and there’s sixteen end movies you can have over the four dream sequences. This means that you actually feel like you have an input as to what’s going on. It also refuses to lead you by the hand and of the three people I’ve spoken to about the game who bought it today, all of us had our own theories and explanations of the characters thoughts and feelings and what the dreams all meant.

Positives

~Very unique experience for each individual player

~High production values for such an experimental title

Negatives

~Very limited gameplay

~Over in an hour if you want to find everything as a completest

~If you do not wish to explore your own thoughts and feelings to get enjoyment from an experience, you will detest this game

Conclusion

Far more successful than Dinner Date, a mixture of very simple puzzle and hidden object type gameplay, Trauma is for the thinker who would rather sit and analyse each photo and word spoken to rinse out the games enjoyment. If you’re only thoughts to gaming are speed, guns and blood – this will be your worst nightmare.