There's a new game called An Aspie Life which gives people a sense of what life is like living with autism.

We spoke to the creator, Brad Hennessy, who has just finished his year 12 exams a couple of days ago.

Brad lives with Asperger’s Syndrome which is, in his own words, “one of the categories on the autism spectrum and basically you have a lot of different issues with how you socialise and see the world.” An Aspie Life is based off Brad’s personal experience of autism: “With autism everyone is a little bit different, so we all have traits that are pulled from a pool. Some people might be able to tell body language, while others may not. But, in general, we all see the world the same way.”

To recreate this inability to decipher body language, Brad has created all characters in the game as dark shapes or outlines. Also, says Brad, sounds can be quite disorientating for people living on the spectrum and so “Every sound in the game gets represented on a sensitivity meter.” If a police car goes past in the game it gets incredibly loud and you have to manage how your character copes.



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“I wanted to try and recreate the social anxiety that comes from living with autism.”

As you can see from the trailer, the game was made in a 16-bit, side-scroller, arcade-style and has echoes of Blade Runner. “I’m really glad you got the Blade Runner feeling,” says Brad. “That was the first thing that inspired me with the art style and the music.” Otherwise, the vibe is dark and moody for a reason. It’s meant to make you feel a bit uncomfortable.

“For most people, it’s not difficult to go out in the world, going to the shops, going to meet people, but with autism every small thing you do that’s different to your normal routine, that’s different to what you’re used to, is a massive issue and you get very anxious.”

Brad himself finds conversations with strangers to be difficult: “At the shops, whenever I go to purchase something or go to the cash register I get really, really anxious. I just don’t know if I’m going to stuff up. What are they going to think of me? And of course, at the end of the day they don’t think anything, really, but it just starts building in my head. That’s represented in the game through little battle scenes where you have to try and talk to the person but you can’t see them because they're just a black outline.”

'Your mission as the player is to survive doing some normal everyday tasks. The main aim is to keep all health / emotion meters at max. the levels in the meters decides the ending.'

The game has been tested and Brad has been getting positive feedback across the board — more than anything he wanted to make it fun to play. “At the Young ICT Explorers [a non-profit competition], there was a few other students that had autism and they played the game and they were very impressed,” says Brad. “They said ‘This is my life!’ and then we’ve also had other people play the game who are not autistic and they thought it was very fun. One guy even said it was very eye opening for him, he couldn’t believe it.”

An Aspie Life is currently online as a beta version and Brad says it’s about 75% done. Now that he’s finished his studies, though, he plans on being finished by next year (“maybe April”) so that he's done before starting university.

You can find it here. And listen to Brad talk about creating the game with Gen & Lewis below.