Everything Is Going to Be OK

Nathalie Lawhead's Everything Is Going to Be OK is a video game art piece taking the form of an operating system full of "programs" with various levels of interactivity. The point of the game is to simply take in whatever fairly strange and abstract experience each of these programs have to offer, usually featuring amorphous bunny-like creatures with high-pitched voices and a penchant for soul-crushing pessimism. Occasionally one of these programs will partly offer an unexpected form of media, such as poetry.

Like with many art games, different people are going to take away different experiences, and those experiences are arguably prone to a higher level of subjectivity than with other styles of games. Explaining Everything is going to be OK to someone who hasn’t played it before isn’t terribly helpful, and having that experience for oneself is a fairly important contextual piece when dealing with other people’s own personal experiences with the game. Everything is going to be OK’s polarizing aesthetic choices and the way it handles its difficult and serious themes is going to draw a different reaction depending on who views it, making it difficult to praise the individual elements of the game as being “good.” That said, as a person with some level of insight and experience, I can tell why I think the presentation of this game is the way it is, and why it’s not necessarily “bad.” That makes this less of a “review” of the game, and more of a “defense.” While most of the comments I've seen are in praise of the art piece, there are a few dissenters and this is largely a response. If you haven’t played Everything is going to be OK yet, and your curiosity has been piqued, now’s the time to stop reading this and spend a good twenty-to-thirty minutes checking it out.

The primary topic holding these programs together is mental illness, with themes of anxiety and depression drenching Everything is going to be OK to an extreme degree. These themes aren't approached with any level of subtlety, either – references to mental illness are incredibly on-the-nose and constant. The player is barraged by high-pitched bunnies mentioning their loss of hope and the will to live, social anxiety, and feelings of worthlessness. This is related to the most persistent criticism of the game – the one I personally wish to defend against the most. Many people have expressed that the thematic content of the game is poorly handled. Its lack of subtlety in regards to topics regarding mental illness, the endless repetition of depression and anxiety-related dialogue, and it’s very overt imagery have garnered it some flak. Some find it disrespectful and mocking towards those with illnesses, others think it’s annoying or edgy, and some people are in both boats. However, I think people who are viewing it in that way might be missing the point. Mental illness has the ability to take over one’s life in a very pervasive way, often destroying relationships and introducing a constant stream of thoughts of despair and self-loathing. For those with anxiety and depression, their condition can become overbearing and affect every aspect of their lives. For those who are dealing with the most extreme end of mental illnesses, these thoughts can dominate their lives. There is nothing subtle about mental illness. This is how it is. Once this has been realized, the game’s detractors become part of the point. Are the ones who deride this game for not being subtle enough the same type of people who are naïve enough to ask those with illness to be more subtle about it? To just “cheer up” or “be quiet”? To just “drink some water” or “get some fresh air”? While I can’t give any hard evidence to support that detractors of the game are completely ignorant about how mental illness works, a quick glance through the comments on videos related to the art piece show that many mentally ill folks find the game intensely relatable. People with mental illnesses seem to show a tendency for praising the game for its brashness and accuracy, which means many of the criticisms are likely coming from those who aren’t intimately familiar with the subject matter at hand. Like it or not, Nathalie Lawhead has created an accurate depiction of what it is like to suffer a cocktail of mental conditions that often go hand in hand. Regardless of whether or not she’s an individual with mental illness, regardless of whether or not this is a vent piece, regardless of whether or not any of this was intended, that much is true.

While I would normally want to discuss the visual and sound design of a game before getting into the nitty-gritty thematic details, I think it’s important to establish the latter first in this case because I feel like the aesthetic is heavily dependent on the theme. Visually, the game falls into the "post-Internet Microsoft Paint" and "eye-strain" aesthetics, featuring heavily posterized and clashing colors, simply-drawn designs mixed with clip art and compressed videos, and flashing apocalyptic imagery. The game’s very intense visuals, the loud and compressed sound effects, and the high-pitched and repetitive dialogue help contribute to the ever-punishing nature of the game. Regardless of how you feel about the way it looks and sounds, it’s going to capture your attention immediately while demanding you to stay. It’s a game that refuses to be ignored. These elements of the game are a reflection of its themes. Attention-grabbing, repetitive, anxiety-inducing, and exhausting, the presentation of the game strives to become the true essence of its themes. Its success in this regard is going to be contingent largely on one’s familiarity with the theme at hand, but that’s not to say that one has to be mentally ill in order to come away with a positive experience.

At this point I’ve gone over the most important elements that I’ve wanted to cover, but before I end this analysis I want to draw attention to the most persistent trait of the game: the use of depressed bunny-like blob creatures as the focus of attention, and their failure to defeat their negative emotions. Images of a suicidal bunnies with piercing voices getting severely injured or dying might bring to mind childish Newgrounds animations, or perhaps one might think that’s something a person who shops exclusively at Hot Topic would find funny. However, I would not be surprised if the cute characters of Everything is going to be OK are meant to represent the facade of normality and happiness that people with mental illness are pressured into adopting. Bunnies are cute, and are associated with comfort and warmth. Comfort and warmth are associated with happiness and contentment. The bunnies of Everything is going to be OK often lie about or hide their negative feelings from others while pretending to be happy or optimistic about the future. Their cute form is a literalization of the mask they’ve put on for others, and the lie they tell themselves and others is right there in the title of the game.

I walked away from Everything is going to be OK thinking. I couldn’t get it out of my head. The more I thought about the game, the more I wanted to write about the conclusions I had made. Whether one appreciates it or not, my hope is that the game at least gets every player that walks away from it to do that much. I feel that passing off the game as shallow is criminally underestimating it even just as an audiovisual experience, and I think it’s important that others write about their own feelings and interpretations of what they believe the game has or has not accomplished. I don’t think that what I’ve written here is definite. This is simply the impression I was left with after I was finished. While others may feel similarly, I would hope that they have other points to contribute. If you, like me, are bad at following instructions and have read this far without actually playing the game, I highly recommend Everything is going to be OK for those who have the energy to go through it.