From a psychological perspective, the concept of “sanity” is a bit difficult to define. Even someone with the presence of mind to say “I am sane” could actually be completely off their rocker by common social standards. It’s not the kind of thing you can quantify, at least in real life.
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Video games, though, are different. Everything in games is governed by numbers and statistics, to the point that even a character’s mental well-being can become a quantifiable game mechanic.
Games with sanity systems often go about them in slightly different ways, but all have a general theme of keeping yourself grounded in an extremely stressful, occasionally supernatural situation.
Let’s take a look at ten of the best examples of this idea.
10Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Don’t Look Directly At It
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Perhaps one of the most well-known games to have a sanity mechanic, particularlypsychological horror games, is the originalAmnesia: The Dark Descent. Being trapped in a dark gothic castle would be pretty unpleasant on its own, but Amnesia decides to throw humanoid horrors and man-eating jam into the mix.
In Amnesia, standing in pitch darkness and staring directly at enemies will passively drain your sanity, while standing in well-lit areas, solving puzzles, and generally progressing the game will restore it. This is why it’s vital to keep a few tinderboxes on hand, as lighting torches and lanterns will provide your scant few safe havens from madness.
If your sanity gets too low, you’ll start to hallucinate. Your vision will warp and distort, innocuous objects will become disturbingly twisted, and false enemies can appear and disappear. If your sanity bottoms out, you’ll be paralyzed on the floor for a few moments and all nearby enemies will be immediately alerted to your location.
960 Seconds!
Time Erodes Everything
60 Seconds! Reatomized
Plenty of games have post-apocalyptic settings, but most of them focus on combat, survival, and infrastructure. Very few attempt to tackle the very real, very dangerous feelings of hopelessness that trying to survive such a situation would bring about. One of those few is60 Seconds!.
In this game, you have to manage a family of four as they attempt to survive a nuclear apocalypse in a fallout shelter. In addition to keeping everyone fed and in good health, you need to be mindful of each family member’s sanity. The general stress of isolation, coupled with morally dubious circumstances like raiding neighbors, takes its toll.
As family members succumb to insanity, they can begin damaging vital supplies in the shelter and frightening other members. In the worst case, they could wander right out of the shelter, never to be seen again.
8Darkest Dungeon
Cracking Under The Pressure
Darkest Dungeon
You know that feeling when it’s five minutes to the end of a work shift, and you’re ready to go home, when suddenly someone drops a stack of paperwork on your desk? Take that level of abject despair, multiply it by about a hundred, and you have an idea of what dungeoneering is like for your party inDarkest Dungeon.
Whenever your party is traveling through a dungeon, random events, traps, andbattles with Lovecraftian horrorswill cause your characters’ stress to build up, indicated by a dark meter under their health.
If a stress meter fills entirely, that character’s mettle will be tested. Should they fall short, they’ll be struck with a maddening affliction, turning selfish, cowardly, or completely incomprehensible, hindering your party and stressing them further.
However, in some rare circumstances, those whose mettle is tested will actually attain a state of virtue, overcoming their fear and stress and transforming into righteous, courageous heroes. Sadly, this state is strictly temporary, while afflictions require direct intervention to restore stress to a neutral level.
7Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Insanity Beyond The Fourth Wall
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
Most games with sanity mechanics like to keep things a little more subtle, relegating effects to simple hallucinations or flat stat penalties.Eternal Darkness, however, is not most games. No sir, this is a game thatbeats you over the head with insanity and revels in it.
In Eternal Darkness, Sanity is one of the three primal forces, governed by the Ancient Xel’lotath, alongside Power and Magic. Enemies from every affinity can passively drain your characters’ Sanity just by looking at them, represented by the depleting green meter. As your Sanity decreases, the game’s signature Sanity Effects begin to manifest.
We start small with skewed camera angles and strange noises, before ramping up into rooms full of fake items, your character’s head popping off, and even a fake volume slider making it look like someone sat on the remote. It’s actually kind of entertaining to be a little insane, though if you lose your sanity completely, you’ll start losing health next.
6Don’t Starve
Isolation Ain’t Good For You
Don’t Starve
Have you ever gone camping by yourself? Some people say it’s really fun and relaxing, but others find the isolation to be somewhat distressing. It’s usually fine if there’s a lodge or something nearby, but there’s definitely no lodge to take refuge in when you’re playingDon’t Starve.
Sanity must be managed alongside your character’s Health and Hunger in Don’t Starve. In broad terms, it’s not that complicated; eat good food, get plenty of sleep, and stay out of dark, overtly hostile areas, and your Sanity won’t be adversely impacted. Of course, you can’t get materials for cooking or crafting without venturing into dangerous territory, so you’re gonna have to deal with some stress.
As your Sanity lowers, mysterious, shadowy creatures will begin to appear in your peripheral vision. At first, these are just hallucinations, but if your Sanity passes a critical threshold, they’ll physically manifest and come for your throat. This is accompanied by distorted visuals and music, just to drive home that you’ve lost your marbles.
5Lobotomy Corporation | Monster Management Simulation
The Ol’ Corporate Soul-Crushing
Lobotomy Corporation | Monster Management Simulation
Anyone who’s ever worked a nine-to-five knows how draining the office life can be on your mental fortitude. It’s bad enough being subject to busywork and forced to wear a suit, but what if you had to do all that while also guarding your mind from unspeakable terrors? Well, that’d be a pretty normal day at Lobotomy Corporation.
Rather than your own sanity, you need to keep an eye on the sanity gauges of your many employees, both as they go about their daily workloads and cross paths with captured abnormalities. Taking psychic damage from hostile abnormalities will affect your employees’ sanity, with their critical threshold dependent on their individual stats.
When an employee goes completely bonkers, what happens next is determined by their other stats. Some employees wander aimlessly, some sabotage equipment and release abnormalities, and some hunt down and kill other employees or themselves.
4Phasmophobia
Ghosts Chip Away At Your Mind
Phasmophobia
It’s an old trope that malevolent spirits prey on unwell minds, either to rob people of their vitality or just for laughs. It stands to reason, then, that someone who hunts ghosts professionally would need to possess a strong mental fortitude. Keeping your wits is the only way to keep spirits in check inPhasmophobia.
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Every player in a round of Phasmophobia has an individual sanity level, which is then averaged into a team sanity rating. Sanity is passively drained through interactions with the current ghost and using supernatural items, and can only be restored by highly specific items like Sanity Pills.
When the team’s sanity drops low enough, ghosts become more overtly hostile, triggering hunts and displaying more powerful, dangerous abilities. Some ghosts areonly interested in individual sanity levels, targeting players with low sanity while leaving saner players be.
3Shadow Hearts
Random Battles Are Stressful
Shadow Hearts
Random battles are a common sight in many JRPGs, and nothing that anyone feels a particular need to comment on in-universe. In actuality, though, being constantly beset by otherworldly horrors around every corner would be pretty upsetting.
In the originalShadow Heartsand its sequels, all characters have a Sanity Point (SP) count in addition to the usual HP and MP. As characters are attacked by enemies, their SP will gradually decrease. If it hits zero, they’ll go berserk, either wasting turns or attacking allies. You need restorative items to keep their SP topped up.
Interestingly, characters like Yuri, who have experience tangling with the unknowable, have a higher base SP stat and can endure a little more sanity loss. Inversely, characters who haven’t directly battled otherworldly creatures much like Alice have a lower base SP stat and succumb more easily to insanity.
2World Of Horror
There’s More To Lose Than Health
World of Horror
InWorld of Horror, the easiest way for the Old Gods to get you off their backs is to plant something pointy in your back, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way. When confronting unknowable horrors, the mind is just as vulnerable as the body.
In addition to your Stamina, which governs your ability to endure pain and injuries, you have to keep track of your Reason stat. Frightening, startling, and overtly supernatural events will deal damage to your Reason, wearing down your ability to understand and handle imagery mortal minds were never meant to.
In certain combat encounters, freakier enemies will directly attack your Reason instead of your Stamina, or even target both simultaneously.
If your Reason drains completely, you’ll be reduced to a gibbering mess and committed to a mental hospital, resulting in a game over. With you confined to a padded room, the Old Gods are free to pursuetheir world-dooming agendasunburdened.
What’s That On The Water?
Fishing on a small raft in a pond is a relaxing way to spend an afternoon. Professional fishing out in the middle of the ocean, however, is not relaxing. It is very difficult and very stressful, especially if you try to do it while it’s pitch-black outside. That’s bad enough on its own, but when the seas are crawling with terrors like inDredge, the whole situation gets even worse.
In Dredge, driving your boat at night and getting attacked bythe horrors of the seawill increase your Panic meter, represented by a twitchy eyeball at the top of the screen. Panic can be assuaged by getting a good night’s sleep and only traveling during the day, but unfortunately, the game frequently requires you to operate at night.
When your Panic is too high, strange events begin to occur. Rocks pop out of the water out of nowhere to damage your ship, birds swoop down and steal your fish, and monsters like Night Anglers appear in greater numbers.
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