Consent Games

Stuck in a Dark Place: a Serious Game About Consent

Stuck in a Dark Place is a serious game about consent that covers a wide range of scenarios examining the importance of consent.

I truly feel like games can be a great educational tool that can transcend many boundaries. Often times, games can present a situation much better than verbal storytelling can. With the game “Stuck in a Dark Place”, you can truly get into the scenes shown making it a great tool for consent education. The game is great for high schoolers or talks about sexual consent at work or on college campuses. The game does contain some disturbing situations though, and you should check with the group you are presenting it to before playing the game in class or having them do so.

Stuck in a Dark Place allows players to customize their character – a helpful reminder that consent affects everybody. Players can also use the “content warning” filter to skip some of the more disturbing descriptions and depictions of sexual assault.

Getting Started With Stuck in a Dark Place

The game has a rather unusual start. You design a character by picking their skin and hair color and then learn that you’re in jail. It is quickly explained that you were a teacher who had a relationship with a student, your name is Chloe and you feel wrongly imprisoned. Chloe claims that it’s wrong to be in jail when the student consented to their relationship but so many men went free after harassing her. Her cellmate, Sonia decides to help her through her emotionally scarring memories by having her write about them.

This screenshot from Stuck in a Dark Place shows a subway rider who is being “groped” – just one depiction of nonconsensual sexual activity covered by this serious game.

The game consists of 8 chapters all covering different, but very real, situations where Chloe felt violated. As the story goes along, the situations that Chloe recall get more disturbing and paint a picture of what led her to eventually be imprisoned. The game will have you play two mini-games that help you etch out the words Chloe is using to convey her letters to the abusers. You will have to search for the right words in a puzzle or unscramble them to fill in the missing blanks. The game has a safe setting that you can select to skip some of the more graphic content, in case you feel uncomfortable with some of the serious situations shown.

Stuck in a Dark Place reminds players that “a stolen kiss isn’t romantic — it’s assault”

The game also features a lesson mode. This mode is great for using if you’re teaching a class about sexual abuse and consent. The mode will let you choose from one of the eight chapters and play through it without having to play the rest of the game. In lesson mode it still has the option to block out some of the more sensitive content in case your class is uncomfortable with the scenes. Each chapter has a different scenario that offers a great point for discussion on where a line should be drawn and encourages women (and men!) to speak up against abuse.

Players of Stuck in a Dark Place will solve several puzzles to proceed through its story.

Reoccurring Themes (Sensitive Material Warning)

While sexual abuse is very hard for many women and men to talk about, it’s a talk that has to happen to make progress. I was even able to relate to a few situations in the game personally.

Respecting consent is just as important in growing trust between people as is being there for them. Without listening to someone’s personal wishes and respecting their feelings, we are setting ourselves up to lose a potential partner or friend.

One of the chapters goes over a moment where Chloe had a boy walk up and kiss her. The boy had been following her around for a bit in school. Her friends, of course, blew it off because he was “cute.” I think this situation is one many young women can relate to and happens more often than people realize in school environments. A lot of our media makes it seem romantic to be spontaneous but the game does a great job at pointing out how a kiss without consent was not acceptable to Chloe when it happened to her.

The media makes it seem romantic to be spontaneous but the game does a great job pointing out how a kiss without consent is not acceptable in real life.

Stuck in a Dark Place also goes over workplace harassment. While the situation shown with Chloe is an extreme case of workplace harassment, it happens every day to many men and women. Oftentimes, a job can be the difference between having food for the week or your family going hungry. Many people in today’s economy have a huge fear of losing their job due to the overwhelming number of applicants in the job market. Thanks to that, abuse of power has become more common in the workplace. Abusive management will use this leverage to get away with many acts that are clearly inappropriate (and sometimes illegal). Often times, as shown with Chloe being an intern, they will target those with the greatest need for the job or are inexperienced.

Sonia provides guidance to Chloe – and players – about consent throughout the game.

The last two situations I want to cover both dealt with Chloe being raped. The first scenario shows Chloe being taken advantage of while she was too drunk to provide consent. The boy she had started dating saw that she couldn’t speak up and took her into the bushes to have sex. Later in her life Chloe has an abusive husband who incorrectly claims marriage provides eternal consent. Neither of these scenarios are consensual but in both situations Chloe falls into a victim-blaming mindset. Victim blaming is very common in these situations with many abuse victims feeling they should not speak up or should stay with the partner who has sexually assaulted them. Although these scenarios are difficult to stomach it’s important that people recognize that these nonconsensual acts are unfortunately common.

Getting Into a Better Place

The game does explain that what Chloe did with her student was wrong as well. It also shows that abuse by the men in her life eventually led her to take on an adolescent as a partner continuing the chain of broken consent.

More than anything though, the game showed Chloe’s path to hope for a better future. It constantly pushed the point that while it’s hard to fight back with these situations, there are many laws in place that we can use to protect us against abusers. The game wants you to know that you always have a right to push back against sexual assault and that while something as simple as a kiss may not be a big deal to others, what’s really important is how the situation makes you feel. Your body is your own don’t let anyone take advantage of it or make you feel like should just go with the flow. There is always help out there waiting for you.

You are not alone.

Stuck in a Dark Place covers a wide variety of scenarios about consent but is not appropriate for all ages.

Support this work by donating online: 

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Or by texting STOPTDV to 707070 

Gaming Against Violence is an award-winning program presented by Jennifer Ann's Group, a 501(c)3 charity [EIN: 20-4618499].

Play Stuck in a Dark Place, a serious game about consent

Developed by: Another Kind
Produced by: Jennifer Ann's Group
Price: Free
Language: English
Age Rating: Teen

More information about Stuck in a Dark Place 

► Get Stuck in a Dark Place on the iTunes Store 

► Get Stuck in a Dark Place on Google Play

► Stuck in a Dark Place available at Amazon

► Play Stuck in a Dark Place in your browser 

► Watch a video trailer about Stuck in a Dark Place

For Sexual Assault Awareness Month a Video Game about Consent: ADRIFT

ADRIFT is a free game about consent appropriate for all ages.

Consent is something that comes in many different forms. It can be something as adult as sexual consent or simply respecting someone else’s personal space. No matter what though, when you ask to do something with someone, you should always have their consent. This can be a difficult concept to teach to children and you may not even know how to go about it successfully. This is where the game ADRIFT comes in to assist you when teaching younger children all about the do’s and don’ts of consent!

In ADRIFT the player plays as a space miner exploring an abandoned spaceship.

Playing ADRIFT

ADRIFT is a very simple game that can be easily understood by a child of reading age. The game has you play as an astronaut who is a member of a space salvage crew that encounters a derelict ship in deep space. You are tasked with retrieving the abandoned ship’s valuable artificial intelligence (AI). The game play takes place on the abandoned ship where you are completely alone aside from the AI who offers to guide you through the ship to safety. The only deal is you are going to have to listen to your newfound partner in order for the mission to go smoothly. The game has some puzzle aspects to it but they are completely simple as long as you are careful to read your partner’s instructions. If you try to rush through the game or wander off on your own then things might go badly.

The player must respect consent in order to successfully proceed.

The concept to make it to the end is easy. Just access the ship’s AI through the computer terminals found throughout the ship before every action. By doing this, you will learn the proper steps to take to get through the ship. If you don’t follow the directions properly your screen will blink red. The AI will also become less trusting of you the more you decide you want to do things on your own without checking with it for approval. It is very easy to look over some information, so be sure to have your little ones pay close attention to the AI as each line it says contains important information.

If you want to teach consent well, you can do two playthroughs. The first you can let your kids go through the game as they wish. This will show them that not respecting consent has consequences that might affect their relationships. The game helpfully provides a recap after the game ends that shows where consent was – and was not – followed during the game.

Afterwards, get them to play through again to positively show them the difference it makes when consent is respected. It makes the space miner’s job much easier and at the end they will also see that the AI has a much better attitude towards them.

The end-of-game summary will show you when you failed to properly respect consent

Real World Applications

The information presented in the game can be easily applied to many real world situations. For example, if a child has a friend and they ignore their friend’s wishes by playing tricks on them against their will that friend might eventually distance themselves from the child.

ADRIFT makes a point to show two paths that the player can choose with the ship’s AI. By simply listening to the AI’s wishes and respecting those wishes they forge a lasting friendship while successfully navigating the ship’s interior to escape and win the game.

Support this work by donating online: 

PayPal 
Apple Pay

Or by texting STOPTDV to 707070 

Gaming Against Violence is an award-winning program presented by Jennifer Ann's Group, a 501(c)3 charity [EIN: 20-4618499].

Play ADRIFT, a game about consent

Developed by: Quinn Crossley and Andrew Connell
Produced by: Jennifer Ann's Group
Price: Free
Language: English
Age Rating: Rated 4+

More information about ADRIFT 
► Get ADRIFT on the iTunes Store 
► Play ADRIFT in your browser 
► Watch a video trailer about ADRIFT