Copyright © 2025 Cody Squadroni All Rights Reserved.
Minor Project: Technology Journey Map
Technology Journey Map

Description
I choose to play Adventures with Anxiety, and this is an interactive story about anxiety, where you are the anxiety. I decided on this game because of my battle with anxiety this past couple of years during the pandemic, and I found it interesting that I would be on the other side of it.
Map Features
I created my map based on the emotions I was experiencing as I played through. I decided to go this route because this is a game on anxiety, a feeling I am familiar with, and if it is supposed to help in a way, I think emotions as a measure over the time played can paint the picture. The game is 30 minutes long, and I based that on five emotions I felt. In the beginning, I went in with a neutral feeling starting the game not knowing what to expect. As the game began, I felt anxious because it brought up questions and answers that I had experienced, bringing my anxiety to flare up. Next, the human starts to drink to ease the anxious feelings they are having. This scenario made me angry because I went through a similar situation using Alcohol as an aid, but it only worsened. I was more so mad at myself than the game. After that, the game has the anxiety and the human talk to each other and communicate about what is going on being a calming feeling. This had me thinking about my experiences and how I could communicate those or convince myself that my anxiety is just trying to protect me. We need to come to an equal ground of normalcy. After thinking about it, the game ended and had me in a clear mind, not worried and showing me we all have or had something happen and that it's okay. I didn't think I would go through so many emotions while playing a game like this, but I was wrong. It helped me really apply what the game mentioned to my own problems. I chose to communicate emotions because it is not something I usually do, and I used emojis instead of numbers as a visual way.
Reflection
The game is a battle between the human and the anxiety, and you play as the anxiety. The interactive story is interesting because it puts you as the anxiety, and you are trying to protect the human. Still, this protection is seen as fear by the humans, causing their anxiety to start. You are trying to get the human energy bar to zero by protecting their physical, social, and moral needs. You are the inner voice telling the human the worst-case scenarios of partaking in things like a party. For example, you are invited to a party, and it asks what you should do, the choices are Say yes, or we'll die from loneliness, say no, it's full of poisonous drugs, and ignore it, we make parties sad. These are all bad and worrisome choices that relates well with how anxiety attacks. Even if you select the most positive answer, for example, you will attend it, then go into details about how no one will show up to your funeral if you die. So even though the outcome of going to a party was positive, the anxiety goes right into but if we died.
You answer these types of questions, which result in it damaging the human and eventually taking their health to zero. When the health gets to zero is says you have successfully protected your human's physical, social, and moral needs. After you successfully make the human cry or throw the phone, you end up at the party for round two. In the second round, the human tries to talk about good things about themselves, and the anxiety continues to steer the direction into a negative. A person from the party then shows you how they could get rid of that voice by drinking. The drinking ends up damaging the anxiety's health. Right before the human is about to beat the anxiety, it gives them a glance at the consequences of drinking, making the anxiety win round 2. After round 2 and some talking to the person throwing the party, you begin round 3. The conversation goes into how people handle their anxiety by throwing themselves into work or sex, drugs, and social media to ignore their anxiety. You end up tieing in the third round where the human will jump off the building into a pool, and anxiety apologizes for not realizing it was hurting the human. The human leaves the rooftop with the understanding that they are scared but that it is okay to be afraid of and then it goes into a cut scene of conversation explaining how they went through all that stuff and still survived. You then talk about fears by communicating with the anxiety instead of fighting the anxiety. It has you go through all the scenarios of fear and talk them through with the human, causing relief.
Overall this game had my emotions going everywhere. There were a lot of situations I could relate to, and putting myself in the shoes of anxiety had me see a different side of things. Anxiety is so obsessed with trying to protect the human from being hurt, and it didn't realize it was hurting the human. The wolf realizes it doesn't need to be a guard dog and protect you at all costs because we have all been through the rough stuff. The outcome was communication and being okay that it takes time to improve. I think the game did a great job relating to a person with anxiety by putting you on the other side of it.