HUMAN, THIS ISN'T A FREE GAME, IT'S TOO GOOD
Reviews for "Adventures With Anxiety!"
TOO GOOD TOO BE A FREE GAME!!!!
You should know, I should be completely and shamelessly honest about this for once. I've been personally struggling with anxiety for a VERY... LONG... TIME, possibly my whole life, but especially in the past 5 years. Ever since I moved to middle school, people have become a lot crueler, consequences have become greater, and rewards have become a lot more rare. Especially in high school. 11th grade. That's where I'm at now. The current global climate has driven me a bit crazy, too. I thought I would be so much happier without having to deal with my awful classmates constantly tempting me with dares and drugs and terrible life advice (they're a lot like that one guy from the party part of the game... you know, the one who nearly got the main character killed). It was completely euphoric after I finished 10th grade, but once I started 11th grade my problems have become much... much worse than before. During the summer I tried taking part in a Zuerel reanimated collab (it's called "Joel's Big Jump" in case you wanted to know) to connect with people that have similar interests to me (I'm a MASSIVE animation enthusiast!), and it was great for the first couple of months. Everyone was simply doing their part and being great people (they were surprisingly mature, the first ever mature people I've met aside from my mother). But I was being a stubborn perfectionist to myself, as I always do out of... extreme desperation to impress others and convince them to stay my friend. I never made it visible, but I'm sure they could sense some sort of dark perfectionist aura coming out of me, due to the fact that I only partially finished my submission because I took too long. They didn't react negatively to it though, they just kinda said "ok, well thanks for submitting something, thank you so much for your participation, but please learn to work more efficiently." My... "anxiety guard dog" as you call it, alerted me that I'm not worthy enough of anyone's friendship, and I have to go down ten-fold and become the world's best animator before anyone can respect me. I thought "No, that's insanely irrational. There are real people out there like JaimeR, ThePivotsXXD, and especially Zuerel himself that I can't possibly best in the near future. Plus, there's so much other magnificent animated content and art out there to sift through that by the time I'm even close to done sifting through I'll definitely be dead." Then it was like "Well yeah, okay, maybe that IS irrational, but you're irrational, too! Just listen to yourself complaining and worrying about the smallest of things. And what about your autism/aspergers syndrome? Face it kid, you'll be forever broken. You are too different from others to live up to their expectations..." Once again, I believed it. I then joined another discord server with a 13-year-old animator who seems to do a perfect job without even trying: Estaban Toons. Now, many of the people there seem to be ignorant and selfish (I suppose because most of them are just kids?) I made some art with them there, and that was pretty fun. Eventually I started working on animating a shitpost, one I found particularly funny. I had a lot of fun with it and painted the backgrounds and animated the characters while listening to my favorite podcasts. Then I showed those people what I was working on. Most of the people were just like "haha, nice" or "insert stereotypical dick/sex/misc. inappropriate joke here", but one of the people was completely awestruck by my work. He asked me "how did you get so damn good!? I want to be just like you!" I was initially shocked because I was used to thinking of myself as a mediocre person and artist, but I told him the secret to my success. He loved it so much! Later he even gave me a personal Discord friend request. I accepted. At this point, I finished the animation and was eager and excited to post it on YouTube. I did, but not long after my mother confronted me about it, telling me something along the lines of "YOU CAN'T HAVE CARTOONS SAYING BAD WORDS!!! DELETE THE VIDEO NOW!!!!!!" So, out of extreme shame and frustration, I did. Except that I posted it here on Newgrounds for anyone to see, and that's because my mother doesn't know I go here. I feel guilty about that too, but it's ultimately the lesser of two evils. The video isn't even that bad, it's a joke... People loved it, which was great to see! Acceptance from real people, that's new! Even though they don't know me personally, that moment felt so personally good...
Then I found this game a couple hours ago, and damn is it good! It made me realize things about myself and my anxiety that I've never known before... Imma try reconnecting with old friends like my parents have been obsessively telling me to do, and strengthening current relationships. No promises, but still...
You are truly a good person, remember that... I'm sure this game has been a positive turning point for many people, and you did that with your amazing creative magic! I wish the best for you, and I'll hopefully see you on the other side somewhere. Keep being you!
how is this so good
p e r v y m o n <3