Is Therapy Simulator about my well-being or my patients? Upon starting the demo, the very first thing I could do upon arriving at work it press the elevator button and end the day. How good is that? Starting work and ending it before lifting a finger! Well, you have to lift the finger then caress the protruding knob (ooer – someone needs therapy…) in order to activate it.
No, I’m a professional – I’m not going to bail on my patients. However, immediately leaving the lift, a light switch beckons me. Visibility is fine, but it might as well be a big red button saying don’t touch, as I’m obviously going to press it. Click! 10 XP. Ok, so that’s how they’re luring me in: make me think it’s easy, and then listen to some nutter cry about someone they know named Oedipus who’s a little into ‘Stuck in the washing machine videos’. I digress.
There might be a few words of insensitivity there in using the term ‘nutter’, but my first objective is to deal with the ‘weirdo’ in the waiting room. Therapy Simulator might not have any official endorsements on terminology or access to consultants, as Vampire Therapist had. Let’s see whether I can write prescriptions… No, but I can manage my clientele and swap their sessions about. I’m not sure if I want to speak with the dude who thinks he’s BoJack Horseman.
When your patients do stroll in, they walk over to the coach, and then you click on them to get them to enter the ‘therapy’ room. It’s weird watching someone stroll up, sit down, then immediately stand up again to go into the next room while I’m standing there with my hands in my pockets. Worse, as a ‘therapist’, I leave the door open while other patients sit outside. Clearly, this isn’t a game to be taken seriously, so don’t read into the simulator part.
This becomes apparent with the dialogue as it’s typically one of three things: throwing back a question or statement that the patient doesn’t acknowledge, having a mildly compassionate response that’s thoughtful, but mostly opinion-based and not from a clinical perspective, or having a silly throw-away reply that’s meant to get a chuckle. After you’ve selected a handful of replies, they get up and leave, you head to the elevator, and count your cash.
Ironically, I’m writing these thoughts down on World Mental Health Day. There’s no way I’m going to fast-track my Clinical Psychologist path with Therapy Simulator alone (not that I want to anyway), and there’s nothing here that I can take away for myself and improve my lifestyle aside from donning a horse mask or becoming a cowboy psychiatrist that makes an absolute mint spouting shit.
There’s a demo on Steam now and coming to Early Access. Get yourself checked in and find out if you’re a weirdo.
