Back in 2002, a little game known as Warcraft 3: Reigns of Chaos was released on PC. While the RTS mechanics and story were praised for their polish at the time, it was the modding community that took the raw components of this game and assembled them into forms that would be immortalised forever. Most popular among these community mods was the MOBA (multiplay online battle arena) format, which became the inspiration behind a whole new category of games such as DOTA, League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Smite, and many others. Much lesser known among the community mods, but much closer to my heart, were the Tower Defence (TD) games. This fledgling genre of games found its footing in Warcraft 3 online custom games, and I became hooked thanks to the deep strategic layers, colourful animations, and genuine challenge that TDs offered. Nonetheless, as I mastered the TD formula to the point that the tactics became rote, I lost enthusiasm for the genre, which lacked a narrative to keep me engaged.
Now, over two decades later, I discovered Ghost Boy, a game that promised Tower Defence gameplay mixed with a strong psychological story. I was instantly smitten with the concept. Developed and published by Two Blackbirds, a brand new Hungarian indie game studio, Ghost Boy follows the titular child after a tragic accident in which he tries to help his family move through an adaptation of the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief. The story takes you through a number of plot sequences, different each time you play, that impact the mental health of the ghost boy’s 3 other family members. You have to fight off (quite literally) the negative thought patterns plaguing the family until they can find closure for the tragedy at the centre of the game. Clinical and child psychologists were consulted in making this game, which adds credibility to the way the game treats the mental health material at the core of the narrative. The gameplay, visual design, UI, and writing are all full of real-world psychology references. In my experience, these elements are weaved in excellently, even if the game built around them is not as compelling.
The gameplay breaks down into 2D side-scrolling moments, visual novel-like story panel sections, and, of course, tower defence. The 2D format becomes the hub of the game, where you move around your house as the ghost boy, reading tooltips, swapping out your mental “buddy” character, checking on the cognitive state of your family, and visiting the 3 family members in their rooms. As you visit the family, you can jump into a series of tower defence levels that are unique to each character, culminating in a boss fight. Each tower defence level consists of waves of enemies attempting to move across the level from their spawn points to the “heart” of the family member in focus. The enemies attack the health points of the family member, and if reduced to zero, you will have to start the level over. That core gameplay loop has several iterations, such as a variety of enemy types, maze-like environments, bosses, and negative scenarios you have to navigate with a high regard for strategy.
To defend against the enemies, you will be building towers, which are designed wonderfully. There are basic towers that can target one enemy at a time, others that have area-of-effect (AOE), and others that help slow the enemies down enough for you to relentlessly bombard them. As a veteran TD player from my Warcraft days, I was quite at home with this format and instantly found synergistic tower combinations that gave me the upper hand against the hordes. Later in the game, as the enemies become more complex, you will have the opportunity to unlock new towers, tower types, and tower upgrades to apply effects such as pushback, poison, frost, etc. The towers and upgrades are purchased via Spirit Points, which drop as collectible tokens when you defeat enemies. Thus, the more powerful the stopping power of your towers, the more lucrative your economy will be. You must build the towers on predetermined island locations (although you do unlock a way to build your own islands for towers later in the game) and subsequently build worker units called “claymen” on those islands to both construct the towers and heal them when they are damaged.
You will also have access to the aforementioned “buddy”, similar to the hero characters I was used to the Warcraft 3 TD mods, that enable unique strategies. There is one that allows you to build walls to direct the flow of enemies as well as gain SP from plant-type towers. There is another buddy that can attack enemies with a sword and heals clayman knights, which ride out on horseback from Knight towers to melee attack your foes. I really enjoyed how choosing a different buddy led to very different approaches to each level, and I found myself swapping them in and out depending on the level layout and enemy types.
The enemies vary from fragile, basic “runners” to more speedy types, types that spawn other enemies, types that instantly kill your clayman workers, and many more. Knowing how to structure your tower builds to defend against the enemy types is half of the battle in this game. The other half would be the boss battles, which add an almost puzzle-like challenge to the level design. Certain bosses will force you to constantly move your buddy around to avoid a changing dead zone on the map, or build worker units in specific spots to shut down direct damage to your health, or collect certain items scattered around the map to defeat a boss sprite. Most of these levels were really fun to play in the way they raised both the challenge and the spectacle beyond what the normal enemies provided. Also, each enemy, whether boss or not, is tied thematically to some sort of mental obstacle. They are all penned as “negative thoughts” within each family member’s head that need to be eradicated. The idea that you are using towers, which act as coping mechanisms, to defeat negative thoughts gave a unique spin to the purpose of each enemy encounter.
Last but not least are the scenario effects, which I thought were perhaps the most brilliant part of the game design. Throughout the game, the narrative will play out in these story panels that describe things that are happening in the lives of each family member. You will be given several text-based choices as to what actions to take in these moments, such as choosing to reject or accept a drink with a friend, all of which can either generate EP (life points) for each family member or lead to mental disorders. These mental disorders, such as alcoholism, social isolation, OCD, and paranoia, all have in-game effects on your tower defence levels. For instance, if the mom develops paranoia, the towers will often shoot at random ghosts that appear nearby as a distraction. If the father develops alcoholism, the towers will lose accuracy, or with OCD, you will need to constantly “clean” off a certain part of the map. My favourite design choice was panic attacks, which would literally darken the whole screen; throbbing music would play; and you would have to navigate your buddy to a light source and stay there until the panic attack subsided. Seeing how they brought these mental disorders to life in the gameplay was phenomenal.
Despite how well mental health themes were designed into this game, there were plenty of things that got my brain bent out of shape about how this game was assembled. First off, the tutorialization was poor. I found myself discovering tooltips later in the game that I should have known about earlier. When I used one buddy to build walls, I later discovered that certain enemy types could not follow the move pattern that the game showed for them because their hitbox was too big, and therefore they would just destroy the wall and ruin my strategy. In the 2D sections, navigation around the house is not explained well, in particular what is available to the player. During the story sequences, there is poor signposting as well; in one instance, during a funeral sequence, I had to move close to each family member to see their dialogue, and I did not understand this was an option, which broke my immersion. The story, in general, felt overly modular and not structured enough when strung together to give me a definitive narrative arc to what Ghost Boy and his family members were doing. I definitely missed the forest for the trees in this game, and that seemed to be because of how segmented each story beat was.
Also, in my opinion, the game is a few hours longer than it needed to be. Some of the later levels get a bit tedious as enemy variety slows down and these giant black knight characters are more prevalent. Though I loved most of the enemy designs, the black knights were just annoying because they stopped your towers from working, which is very, very unfun. The artwork was cartoony with colours that evoked a sombre tone, but it didn’t really stand out to me that much from other games. Similarly, the music was ambient to the point where I didn’t really notice it, so it was all serviceable but not noteworthy.
All-in-all, Ghost Boy expertly weaves in real psychological research in a way that not only educates the player on mental health but does so in a way that gives the mechanics of the game a deeper layer of impact fitting to the source of their inspiration. In particular, I was blown away by how psychological disorders were handled in this game, both in how they affected gameplay in relevant ways and how the player was given various clinical tools to overcome them. Yet, for the ways it excelled in evocative design, the game fell short in other areas, such as poor tutorialization, an overly fragmented story, some joy-stealing enemy types, and a runtime that led to things becoming stale. If you are intrigued by the psychological aspect of this game or enjoy decent tower defence mechanics that borrow from the rich history of Warcraft TDs, you will find much to love. Otherwise, Ghost Boy may be more of an ephemeral experience for you as it was for me.
Release Date: Out Now!
Platforms: PC & Mac
Price: £7.67
Version Tested: PC (Via Steam Deck)
Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy
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