Syntherapy

A wonderful, thought-provoking game about helping a newly sentient AI. Every session and conversation had something interesting to say about people, bonds and society. Syntherapy carefully and kindly handled its discussions about mental health, and whenever it presented friction or complicated turns of events (whenever choices were hard to make), they would feel well-placed and purposeful. It was a journey filled with empathy, celebrating your patient's progress and triumphs, and sharing in their frustrations when things don't work out. While I particularly liked the two main characters, Dr. Park and Willow, everyone was lovingly rendered, and brought to life with full voice acting. I had a few small issues with the game, but they were mostly easy to ignore, like text going off-screen, awkwardly laid out menus or changing voice volume. I also would have liked an easier way to go explore the game's branches once you finished a playthrough, but I was quite satisfied with what I was able to explore. If the idea of helping sentient AI interests you, or you enjoyed games like Eliza and Analogue: A Hate Story, you should definitely give Syntherapy a go!

I really enjoyed this game and so did my community

[h1]Summary[/h1] This game asks hard questions of you pretty soon after you start it up. 'Course, in several cases you can sidestep the question. Sometimes it's even an option to set boundaries for what you feel comfortable and capable answering! [hr][/hr] [h1]First play session[/h1] I did experience a crash bug -- hence why I stopped at 2 hours because I was [b]hooked.[/b] It was kinda helpful because I needed the prompt to stop. Since I was expecting it from the reviews I'd read, it wasn't jarring or upsetting. And yeah, to echo the others, I would absolutely agree that the game is still worth playing. I hope they're not every 10 minutes or anything, but if 2 hours is more the average, then I'd say it's a good exchange. Oh and my save file was fine afterwards too afaik. [h1]Negatives[/h1] [list] [*]Crash bugs might be common. [*]Near the end of [spoiler]your introduction to Dr. Freeman,[/spoiler] there is a very out-of-place voice line. [*]The collectibles can be a little hard to find until you know what they look like. [*]Some of the UI is a little rough -- still works tho! [/list] [h1]Neutrals[/h1] [list] [*]The art quality feels a little inconsistent. [*]I don't know how to do certain things, but idk if that was because I missed instructions or they weren't given. [*]I didn't know what some of the psychology terms meant precisely, but a quick search generally helped. [spoiler]I'm thinking of the early bit where you explain some of the ethical issues.[/spoiler] [*]There was a weird bit where [spoiler]I increased the trust level for someone that was then different between a conversation and the next day at the desk. However that could have changed overnight regardless.[/spoiler] [/list] [h1]Positives[/h1] [list] [*]Literally everything about the story is enthralling. [*]I don't feel talked down to. [*]A video game can talk about mental health with respect and nuance?! [*]Syntherapy asks really interesting questions about balancing commitments, responsibility and integrity. [*]The characters feel like they have real expectations, back and forth. [*]'Helping' fictional characters feels like helping yourself. [/list] [hr][/hr] [b]TL;DR:[/b] omg just play it. jfc check the TWs tho.

考研英语作文教材一样的专业文本，剧本很现实也很深刻，something about philosophy, psychology, and therapy with AI as the background。缺点就是游戏的多周目辅助设计过于简陋了，尽管它有37个结局，复杂的流程图和狗屎一样的存档机制也很难让玩家去体验较为完整的剧情树。总得来说有精力打通一个或者几个结局还是挺有意思的。

I'm always down for a nice visual novel that deals with therapy and psychology. I enjoyed playing Eliza a few years back and so Syntherapy seemed like the next best thing to another great story. You play as Dr. Park, a psychotherapist in the not so distant future. You get an email from a woman asking for help in treating a child. Upon answering the request, you learn that it's not a child, but an AI that was developed in an university. The AI has gained sentience and has shown signs of needing therapy after reading some of the poetry Dr. Park wrote back in college. What follows is a tale of learning about the AI, finding a solution to their problems, and more. Like stated before, Syntherapy is a visual novel so there is mostly listening to some nice voice acting and occasionally making a decision to progress the plot. Making choices effects your relationship with different characters in the story which will determine your ending. There are some small mini-games peppered in there as well, but for the most part you will be listening to the story. The lo-fi tracks included in the game were nice, but short and repetitive. This could be grating to some players since they repeat a lot and you can't change the track during story segments. When you are in the planning section, you can go over emails, review your relationships with different characters in the story to see what you need to improve on in the therapy sessions, play some mini-games, etc. I found the overall story enjoyable and really liked the characters presented, for the most part. Sadly, I do have some gripes with the game. The UI is very unpolished as you'll have a lot of dialogue and tutorial boxes clashing with each other making a big mess. I hold the relationship meters to not make any sense as they would say I have high trust with a certain person, but in a story segment that same person would be yelling at me saying they do not think I'm good and very untrustworthy. There are some game breaking bugs as well. Certain parts of the game that have a fade to black are prone to crashing. I was unable to see the end of the game because after the scene was finished, I'd get a black screen and hear the game playing, but nothing would progress. I have seen numerous players complain about this and sadly the issue has yet to be fixed. Final verdict? Although the game has its problems, I still really enjoyed what I played. The story was very nice and I wish I could have seen it end. There are multiple endings so I assume other endings worked and others don't. If you're in the mood for a therapy visual novel about therapy for AI sentience, then this might scratch that itch for you. Just be wary of the bugs that come with the package. Thanks for reading!

Trigger Warnings for this game should be followed. It's a fantastic game, but it can bring forward feelings you may not want to work through in a game. That said, it felt super well done to me and the game addresses many of the mental health parts well in the first 2 hours I've played so far. It's hard to talk about mental health let alone experience it through a game sometimes, but I think it's a valuable way to connect to people. Syntherapy does this well and makes me ask more questions about AI then I think I'm ready for! Combine this with the Synths from Fallout 4 and I think I'm ready to ban AI. We can't be playing around with LIFE! *Shakes tiny fist!* You can view my playthrough over on my YouTube Channel AmberFrmThVault Gaming Here: https://youtu.be/FYc6Gdgx-b4

I managed to do one playthrough of this game, and I think that is all I'll do. The idea is interesting, but the implementation needs major improvement. For starters if you are going to have 30+ endings, give me a way to easily save my game and/or go back and try new choices without a full restart of the game every time. Every other visual novel I've played has figured out how to do this, so there is no reason for this game not to. And I'm not going to spend an hour replaying it each time because... The other issue. The game gives no feedback on why you get the ending you get. Nothing in the flowcharts, nothing in the game, it just happens. So I have no idea what I did to cause this ending, and no idea how to get something different next time, which makes it likely I'll accidentally get a repeat ending without understanding why. Manual saves, or at least using the flow chart like Raging Loop does where I can select where on the chart to resume my game at would go a long way to fixing up that other issue, as I could then play around without taking about an hour each atttempt. But both combined to make this a not recommended for me.

I am currently studying Counselling Skills level 2 and this game has been a great way for me to practise my skills and to find out more about therapy in general. I think this game is great for anyone who wants to try this line of work. It's a bit strange having to envision talking to an AI but this may be something we have to do in the future...who knows. Great Game, hope roles and more therapy types will be come optional in the future as its a fantastic learning game.