Zero is a baby-faced killing machine with a supernatural ability to bend time. He completes government assassination contracts in exchange for injections of a drug called Chronos, which he got hooked on as part of a now-defunct experimental military operation. While the player can decide how Zero interacts with the psychiatrist who administers his injections, you can’t outright refuse the drug. When he goes too long between doses, you learn that this is because Zero is dependent on Chronos and will die without it. Zero is a victim of systemic exploitation; you’re not given a choice whether he uses because he was never given a choice himself.
In the post-apocalyptic roleplaying game Lisa: The Painful, you define the terms of addiction. You play as Brad Armstrong, a haunted man on a bloody quest to save the last girl on the planet: his adoptive daughter. Brad is addicted to a blue pill called Joy that, according to its game description, “makes you feel nothing.” Joy is a consumable item that turns grueling battles into a cakewalk. It brings instant relief from the game’s punishing difficulty, granting Brad or a party member significant stat boosts, and mechanically mirroring the emotional and physical relief that Brad feels when using. By enabling the player to make the game easier with Joy, Lisa: The Painful lets the player experience Brad’s addiction—if not the high, then certainly the withdrawal.
However, while Joy use is mostly determined by the player, it’s impossible to keep Brad from using completely. There’s an unskippable cutscene where the pill is literally shoved down his throat; Brad struggled with addiction long before the events of the game, and the player isn’t able to change that.
Both Brad and Zero use to deal with post-traumatic stress, which manifests as horrific hallucinations and nightmares in both games. For Brad, taking Joy keeps the visions at bay; for Zero, injecting Chronos keeps him from losing his grip on reality entirely. Lisa: The Painful mechanizes drug use as a tool for empathy, while Katana Zero creates empathy by forcing Chronos onto the player the same way it was forced onto Zero. While they take different approaches, both games leverage player agency to abstract the experience of addiction.
In Kentucky Route Zero, addiction is far more mundane. The magical realist adventure game follows a gruff old trucker named Conway (alongside his equally gruff, equally old dog) on an absurd delivery journey through the caves beneath Kentucky. Conway begins the game sober from alcohol, but the threat of relapse hangs in the air around him, one of many specters in his periphery. Like Zero, Conway defines himself through dialogue options; the player decides what Conway’s parents were like and the name of his hound. However, this authority becomes increasingly limited.
When a freak accident that renders him an amputee pushes Conway into insurmountable, life-altering medical debt, he spirals. When he’s offered a drink on false pretenses, Conway can’t resist, even with the knowledge that the drink would plunge him into further debt—and the player can’t resist, either. In a game where multiple dialogue choices are the standard, you are suddenly stripped of decision: the only option on the screen is an ominous command: “Drink.” If you refuse to select it, the cursor will move itself for you. Kentucky Route Zero simulates the experience of addiction by manipulating the player’s narrative agency; one moment it seems like you have everything under control, until suddenly that control is taken away from you.
By exploring how autonomy, a quality uniquely inherent to games, can guide the emotional experience of a player, games like Katana Zero, Lisa: The Painful, and Kentucky Route Zero create meaningful depictions of addiction that rhyme with the real experience. While no single game can change the world, seeing your own struggles represented with respect and empathy can be an invaluable step toward healing and recovery.
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