ON YOUR TV SCREEN, you are controlling an animated Sigmund Freud, his dog Jofi drooling in the background as you treat a patient who is lying on the couch. Your latest interpretation strikes upon something: Your patient's head splits open to reveal a set of symbolic figures on different layers, representing conflicting levels of the psyche.
Pausing the video game, you turn to your real-life table, which is covered with meticulously sorted boards, tokens, and cards. Your opponents are waiting patiently: It's your turn. You decide to interpret one of your dream cards, which brings one of your clients, the painter Gustav Klimt, to catharsis. You remove a translucent layer that had been clouding Klimt's card, representing the clarity obtained through therapy.
Yes, psychoanalysis can be fun and games—even if these games are a serious sort of fun.
To be clear, I'm describing the video game Freud's Bones and the board game Unconscious Mind. These two recent passion projects by small European companies—based in Italy and Cyprus, respectively—are yet more evidence that psychoanalysis is experiencing a resurgence in popular culture. The fact that the games' creators didn't even know about each other (until I told them) shows there's something in the air, or perhaps the Mediterranean water. Different creators are independently going to the well of psychoanalysis to draw inspiration.
The two games have notable similarities: Both center on Sigmund Freud and his milieu in the early 20th century. Both invite players to conduct research, treat clients, and stroll around Vienna. Both feature cameos from psychological, artistic, and intellectual stars of the day.
They're also quite different. Unconscious Mind has a more polished and reverential feel, luxuriating in historical detail and in elaborate mechanics that may intimidate beginners. (Do you understand “Euro-style game featuring worker placement, engine building, multiple rondels, and cascading effects”? Are you willing to learn?) Its nomination for a Game Manufacturer's Association award in the Heavy Strategy category reflects both its quality and complexity.
Freud's Bones also takes history seriously—including the development of psychoanalytic theory and the background theme of anti-Semitism—but it is more gonzo and surrealist, allowing you to take over Freud's mind and tempt him into adultery and cocaine binges, in addition to treating clients. As a “point-and-click adventure,” it has a low barrier to entry, and its scrappy indie vibe feels appropriate for a woman who had the chutzpah to break into a male-dominated industry by googling how to design games and learning on her own.
Freud's Bones works with Steam or Nintendo Switch. Unconscious Mind requires inserting the leaf into your kitchen table.
Learn more about the games from their creators below. The following interviews have been edited and condensed.
Fortuna Imperatore (AKA Axel Fox), creator of Freud's Bones (Katabasi Studio, 2022)
Freud has been one of my great loves since when I was younger. He's a sharp and cynical, revolutionary personality. I studied psychology at the university, and I worked at a cleaning company. I was deeply in crisis, and I was depressed. I started to write a story about Freud. Then I started to think about a video game. I thought, “Why there are so many games about Sherlock Holmes and nobody wants to create a game on the first magical investigator, in my opinion, Sigmund Freud?”
I never knew anything about games or coding. I was just a gamer. So I just googled how to make a video game. In Italy, I'm the first person to become a game developer without studying game design. I started with RPG Maker, a simple engine to create a game. Later I hired a young artist to make a better drawing of Freud. I coded the first part of the demo and the prototype and hired a programmer. The mind behind this project is totally mine, the idea is mine, and I fully funded it with my money.
The media was very impressed by my story. It's a very romantic story. But I encounter many problems about the fact that I'm not a pure programmer, I'm not a pure student, and I made [the game] in a strange way—atypical and artigianale, that is,
homemade. Many men were very, very angry about this. It's the same story of every woman in this type of industry.
Freud's Bones is a point-and-click adventure. The gameplay is focused on the routine of Freud in the 1920s. And Freud is in crisis. This is a serious game, but it's commercial so I wanted to create a pop figure, a pop icon. During the game you have to do therapy, you have to write letters to Jung and the American [Psychoanalytic Association]. You have to read books on cocaine, on lesions, on psychoanalysis, and so on. At the end of the game, you have to meet Jung, and you as Freud become a patient of Jung.
I read all the clinical cases and I needed to rewrite them. Anna O. is the first patient. I named her Elsa, and she's a hysteric. Two of the patients in game are two backers from Kickstarter. I asked them to tell me their clinical stories. I was absolutely certain that these people were suffering in some way. I was right So I wrote two new clinical cases.
Everyone, in my opinion, wants to know more about themselves, about how we function, our reasoning, dreaming, sexuality, and the id, the ego, and superego. The users want more. This is a very little game, four hours. People say to me all the time that they want a game on Jung. Everybody loves Jung. The second thing is they wanted more and more clinical cases.
Yes, yes, that's true. Freud is an outsider. I tried to make a promotion of this man because this is my favorite outsider and my light.
In The Last of Us Part II, a character is a lesbian. Studies proved that this type of game inspired many, many to come out. They try playing the game with brothers or Dad or Mom, etcetera. There are many video games about cancer, about death. This is the type of product we need. Video games are not just Call of Duty or Fortnite. I want young people to see in this type of game an encouragement to resist societal pressures that promote passivity and fear. Dare to use your own intelligence and confront your fears. This type of game is a journey and you have to be resilient.
Thanos Argyris and Yorgo Manis, creators of Unconscious Mind (Fantasia Games, 2024)
YORGO MANIS: The idea started as making a board game about feelings. The Pixar movie Inside Out was a reference. But then we wanted a twist because we found a board game that looked a bit close to that theme. I was doing my master's degree in fine arts in London, and one of the topics I was dealing with was the theme of narcissism and Freud. And the more I start to think about the connections, the more I was driven into it.
THANOS ARGYRIS: We make midweight games. They are not simple board games. They fully embrace the theme they are talking about. Yorgo found, along with some consultants, that [early psychoanalysts] had an official day that they were meeting. So the main board is these Wednesday meetings.
YM: You start with the meetings. You take notes. You share notes with your followers. You add your notes to your tableau. These become your therapeutic techniques that you apply to your clients. You're going to cure your clients and bring them into catharsis. Your clients will help you with ongoing abilities. At the same time, you can write treatises. You can visit famous locations of Vienna, where you can meet other people and have a social life that can make you more famous in the city. At the end of the game your goal is to advance your popularity—your fame in Vienna and abroad.
YM: When you are taking a client, there is a transparent card that you place on top of your client card, and it's like the emotions that a client can have. Once you reach catharsis, this is removed. Suddenly the artwork of the client is very clean and very bright. But reaching catharsis doesn't mean the therapy is over. This represents the ongoing process of sessions.
YM: The characters that you play are Carl Jung, Margarete Hilferding, Alfred Adler, and Sabina Spielrein. Freud is a neutral character. You can meet him to exchange ideas and do things together. Whenever someone takes a reputation point, Freud will also take one reputation point, so it's inevitable that he will be the one with the most reputation points. All the others work to be, let's say, the second most popular psychoanalyst in Vienna.
TA: We took some artistic liberties, of course. Most of the clients that you will see in the game are also historical people who lived in Vienna at the same period. For example, we have Gustav Klimt, Franz Kafka.
TA: We have two artists for this game, Vincent Dutrait and Andrew Bosley. To be honest with you, in the tabletop industry, it was a little bit talk of the town that we pursued those two masters working together.
YM: We started with Andrew Bosley because we really admired his work. But he was kind of busy. And so we found another artist to deal with the real world, while Andrew will focus on the dream world. We believe this combination is very interesting, with a more traditional way of painting for the real world, while having a more digital one for the dream world.
There is also an [optional] expansion of the game called Nightmares. It gives us the opportunity to have some cool artwork of nightmares. We play a bit with the idea that the more genius you become, the more madness you collect. It also includes a pet for each professor. This is a funny thing. I did the research to see if there was anything similar, and I was surprised [to learn] that Freud would use his dog to calm some clients in his office. It was a happy accident.