Tales of Therapy

The game starts revealing Ivan’s situation, he is a young boy who has shut himself off from everything and everyone. A tragic event has deeply upset him altering his behavior. In the beginning, we don’t know what happened. Ivan’s mother is very worried about her son, she doesn’t know how to help him and decides to ask a psychologist, Dr Alexander, for help. The psychologist is informed that Ivan loves storytelling, so he decides to go for a narrative therapy, in order to keep in touch with his suffering. Dr Alexander suggests they create a story session by session; this will make it possible for Ivan to explore his real problems without talking directly about them, since his suffering is still too intense for him to face it explicitly. In this story the main character, Vain, represents Ivan’s alter-ego. So the game has two different narrative streams: on one hand, in the Dr Alexander’s office, the boy-psychologist dialogues unfold; on the other hand you can follow Ivan’s storytelling as it develops and flows with the help of Dr Alexander, which indeed is the player’s key to explore Ivan’s amazing inner world, acting as Vain.