Is Self-Reflection Insightful or Just Plain Dull?

The realm of video games continually expands, venturing into unexpected territories, often finding ourselves pondering rather unique offerings. In this case, the subject of our pondering is A Session with Dr. Liebnitz. This isn’t your typical action-packed adventure or strategic grand strategy; instead, it presents itself as an interactive narrative experience centred around therapy sessions. The very concept raises intriguing questions about the nature of engagement in games. Can a game truly capture the nuances of therapeutic dialogue and offer a compelling experience, or will it fall flat, feeling more like an obligation than entertainment? Read on to find out!

Unpacking the Unconscious

The moment A Session with Dr. Liebnitz fires up, it is immediately apparent that this game has taken at least some inspiration from The Stanley Parable. It places you directly into the role of a patient undergoing therapy with the titular Dr. Liebnitz. The core gameplay revolves around dialogue, with each session presenting a series of questions and prompts from the doctor, and your choice of interactions/responses within your environment. There are numerous objects for you to interact with and learn from, each one revealing another piece of the story.

While there isn’t a traditional “story” in the sense of a predefined plot with clear objectives, the narrative unfolds organically through the progression of your sessions, revealing aspects of your character’s inner thoughts, feelings, and experiences as you progress.

The Talking Cure

The primary mechanic of A Session with Dr. Liebnitz is exploration. As mentioned, you are required to discover things as you go, taking a lift (elevator for our US readers!) to different floors of your mind in order to learn more at each stage.

As such, you discover several new aspects of this interesting world – presented to you as your own inner mind by the doctor himself – as you explore. As such, this translates into you (your character) learning more about themselves the deeper they dig.

Visualising the Inner Self

The visuals in Dr. Leibnitz are simple, yet quite striking. It is presented in a unique, and interesting cartoon style, reminiscent of the aesthetic used by the Borderlands series. As you explore, the voice of the doctor comes from all around you, explaining your surroundings to you as you encounter them and what it is that he hopes you will learn or discover about yourself.

There are numerous puzzles that you must solve in order to learn more about your character’s innermost thoughts, desires and fantasies. The puzzles aren’t particularly complicated, most of which require the moving of an object from one place to another. However, there is zero hand-holding, and most of the time I found myself randomly clicking until something worked. This didn’t take very long each time, but it was a little disappointing. The puzzles could do with being structured better, which would enhance the experience significantly.

Conclusion

A Session with Dr. Liebnitz presents a novel concept, attempting to translate the introspective process of therapy into an interactive experience. With decent visuals and an interesting story, it’s easy to immediately like this game. Better still, fans of The Stanley Parable will certainly see some influences taken from there. However, the puzzles are rather simplistic and there isn’t much in the way of things that require you to think about things very deeply to progress, which is ironic given the genre of the game. Generally, A Session with Dr. Liebnitz looks great, with decent audio design and a fascinating concept and story too.

Grade: 6.5/10