The Competition

Warning: flashing, loud sound, and screenshake upon failure.

This is a game about my experience with food-focused Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which I was diagnosed with in seventh grade (before the diagnosis, we dubbed this strange happening "The Competition"). I wanted to convey in game form how it felt to feel the need to consume and expel the exact same amount of calories as my twin sister, down to taking steps at the same time, sitting and standing at the same times, and of course eating the same amount of the same things.

During production of this game, I really felt like the 3D modeling and texturing of the game world came easily to me and turned out to make my game look really good. 3D modeling people was much more difficult, so I went with a bit of an abstract approach for the human models. From a coding/game design perspective, I at first created a game that was much too easy to beat and therefore failed to evoke the anxious tension I wanted to convey to the player. To fix this I added the milk pouring and cauliflower portioning mechanics, which made matching food much more difficult than for instance hitting a button the correct number of times to put waffle quarters on your plate. I made the "lose" screen jarring and abrupt in order to make the player feel the way OCD made me feel--like I had to follow its rules or nothing would be okay.

To further iterate on this project, I would add in scenes that convey other aspects of my life with OCD, such as the exercise side (sitting and standing at the same time as your sister, taking the same steps as her) as well as the fighting side (getting into physical and verbal fights with your sister over OCD-related stressors). This way I could further explain what this experience felt like to me, and I could explore more than just the realm of eating.