Shallow Depths

My review this week is for the browser game Grace's Diary (the game itself is available here).

I was surprised by my reaction to playing Grace's Diary, and came out of it wondering if that's something I could write about.  Then I realised there's no reason I couldn't.  I tell a rather personal story, but I do have a lot of distance from it by now.

Grace's Diary focuses on raising awareness of teen dating violence. That isn't the term I would normally use. Firstly because "dating" sounds very American to my ear, so it feels more like television than something real people actually do.

Also, "violence" conjures rather extreme physical images, and I think Jennifer Ann Group are actually trying to target something broader than that.

My main concern at sharing my own tale of teenage romance was actually that it possibly wasn't extreme enough to link to such a serious cause. But I also thought it was important to broaden that idea of violence and situations we are trying to watch out for.

When I started writing initially I churned out a lot more detail. It was cathartic, but not particularly relevant. I had to be harsh with myself, and cut most of it out. I usually hate culling like that when I've gone to the throuble of writing something, but in this case it was definitely the right decision.

My rambling just diluted what I wanted to say. And in the end, deleting the words and being done with them was rather satisfying.