The Best Days

The Best Days is a game about student life and mental upkeep. It’s about pushing forward through the days and nights while attempting to stay healthy and sane. It’s a game about the invisible hours spent toiling away in a room without company. These are, in short, the best days of your life. 

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Recommended Settings:

• 1080p or 4K.
• Headphones (volume > 50%). 
• Recommended for Windows. 

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Detailed Overview:

The Best Days is a game about anxiety, depression, isolation, time pressure, and boredom, but also one about perseverance and routine in the face of them. It’s been created in response to: A) the idealisation of student life (particularly by nostalgic adults), and B) the over-reliance of ‘black dog’ imagery (or other embodiments) in depicting depression. 

This game hopes instead to focus on the mundane experience of depression and anxiety, physiologically, in the context of day-to-day student life.  It makes extensive use of post-processing and sound effects to recreate/visualise some of the sensations and experiences involved.  

This is drawn entirely from personal experience and is not considered more broadly representative of the student population as a whole.

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This game is currently still somewhat of a prototype in places. That being said, do let me know your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment or reaching out to me (@MAnsley_). 

Please consider sharing the game if you enjoyed it (and think others might ;) ), and feel free to check out some of my other work: https://marcusansley.com/

Stay safe!

~ M

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Full Credits:

Materials and Assets:

•  Freepbr.com 
• Brackeys' Health Bar.
• Katsukagi, 'Fabric Polyester 001': https://3dtextures.me/2020/02/04/fabric-polyester-001/
• SNAPS Prototyping Assets

Fonts:

• 'Gunny Rewritten' by Vít Èondák, based on Gunny Handwriting (fonty.condak.cz).
• Peepo.
• 'Digital Dream' by Jakob Fischer (pizzadude.dk).

Music:

• 'Happiest Days' by Three Chain Links, freemusicarchive.org
• 'Palms and Seagulls' by Timecrawler 82, freemusicarchive.org
• 'Only A Dream' by Jon Worthy and the Bends, freemusicarchive.org
• 'What a Way - Prélude' by Semaphore, freemusicarchive.org

Sounds:

• 'CRT TV ON' by kklab5050, freesound.org . Cut up and used with several audio sources. 
• 'Ticking Clock, A.wav' by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of freesound.org
• 'CRT TV' by kklab550, freesound.org
• 'Heartbeat' by 'Mike Koenig', soundbible.com
• 'Click2' by Sebastian, soundbible.com
• 'Carpet footsteps.wav' by redjim, freesound.org
• Additional sounds from www.zapsplat.com