First- thank you for reading, I really very much appreciate your help and time and advice.

I agree wrt the naming. The plan is to have unique representations of aspects of the internal traumas spousal grief manifests, and they will have unique names/appearances/behaviors. It is off putting in the context of the rest of the tone, and is really meant to be a placeholder as I finalize concept art (which you can see here, warning, obviously some disturbing visuals (no gore)- https://imgur.com/a/B6Vl7l6). I’ve been looking into this bit of Greek mythology- the Algea, personified spirits (diamones) of pain and suffering, both in body and mind, grief, sorrow, and distress. They are the bringers of weeping and tears.

So something of that nature, of course specific to the player- a component of the game is that some puzzles will have multiple ways to solve them, and how you choose to do so will be designed to profile the player’s psychology a little, along with how and with what methods you interact with the environment.

It’s be easy enough to take the BACS II (a common psychiatric diagnostic tool) and build story and play mechanics around answering the questions without overtly doing so- so that specifics in the relationship Between Michael and Emma can be altered to suit the player’s psychology.

Lastly- ambiguity is a key factor- the definition here is more for internal uses. This is part plot, part design documentation, and part fictionalization of the game so that there is a clear set of story beats and events to build the gameplay around.
I am very happy that the descriptions give that kind of clarity of vision. This is my vessel into which I invested the grief and pain I felt for the last four years, and still feel (in my moments of weakness), and I want to use it to tell a story that resonates on a deeper level than what we think of when we think of games.

Thank you so much for your time and critique- this is invaluable to me as I try to assemble the pieces of this journey through the Void.