New games: She Dreams Elsewhere explores self-identity and mental health in a retropunk JPRG

There’s been enough time since the release of Undertale to give aspiring new developers a chance to digest it and create their own personal stories in games. Toby Fox’s hit showed a generation of players that the games they remember from childhood could serve as vehicles for powerfully emotional stories. She Dreams Elsewhere is just such a title - created by young indie developer, it takes on issues like self-identity, existence, and mental health using the building blocks of games like EarthBound and the original Final Fantasy. She Dreams Elsewhere is about a young woman named Thalia Sullivan. She’s comatose, and the game is about her journey through nightmares that are preventing her from reawakening. There’s an 8-bit aesthetic to the environments and character sprites, with a color scheme cribbed from old RGB cathode ray tube monitors. But those old-school elements are mixed with more modern effects, as screen ripple and shatter as Thalia and her companions move through her stricken dreamworld, fighting enemies in turn-based JRPG combat sequences. The game is the work of Davionne Gooden, a 21-year-old indie developer and filmmaker who says he’s spent the last three years making She Dreams Elsewhere. He’s drawn from his own experiences with depression and anxiety.

from PCGamesN http://bit.ly/2HhKsXg