The longest walk

Men accounted for 71% of suicides in Scotland (National Records of Scotland, 2020). Over the past five years, Dundee City has been one of the council areas with the highest suicide rate in the whole of Scotland (National Records of Scotland, 2022). The Tay Road Bridge – an infamous local landmark for those seeking to take their life - has been labelled a “crisis area” by local councillor Lynne Short (Not In Vain for Lee, 2020). This wider societal context, alongside a personal drive to learn more about my father, prompted the creation of The Longest Walk.

The Longest Walk is an original biographical walking simulator game for PC and VR about my father’s experience of living with depression and suicidal thoughts. Through a rigorous documentary-inspired process of interview, narrative portraiture, and iterative design, this research aimed to investigate the authentic representation of personal stories of ill health in games and the expanded access to lived experience that the game medium affords. The Longest Walk makes a significant contribution to serious game design and documentary games through exploring the interplay between fragments of narration, fragments of place, and the aesthetics of walking for the artistic interpretation of memory traversal.

The game has been recognised through being nominated for BAFTA Scotland: Best Game (2022), winner of TIGA Games Education Awards: Excellence in Games Research (2023), nominated for TIGA Games Industry: Best Educational, Serious, or Simulation Game (2023), Official Selection at Aesthetica Short Film Festival (2023) and Belfast XR Festival (2023), is available to play on over 250 VR headsets in libraries and cinema hubs around the UK through the StoryFutures Xperience Programme (2023), and is featured in the Barbican-curated “Game On” exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland (2024).