10 Times Gameplay Directly Informed The Narrative

Actual Sunlight is the most accurate representation of depression that I have ever encountered, and I say that as someone who has been chased down by the old black dog countless times by this point in my life.

There's a particular moment in Actual Sunlight where protagonist Evan Winters berates himself for buying yet another video game and potentially wasting even more of his life, but the shop's exit is clearly there, just up in the corner of the screen.

So you can choose to leave, because, as gamers, we've all spent years being given options and told that there's often multiple ways for a story to end. Not this one though. And a lot of stories like it.

You're shown a message that essentially says: yeah, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? But we all know how this ends. The only way for Actual Sunlight to end is with Evan's suicide. And it's in this moment that you realise depression has stripped Evan of all agency and autonomy, because that's what it does to a person. Almost as though they're simply being moved from one place to another by someone pushing buttons on a keyboard.