The Magi and the Sleeping Star, the first game from Game Equals Life, features a hero that has type 1 diabetes.
Many games feature a fatally flawed hero but it’s rare that a game comes along that both acknowledges the flaw and plays it realistically.
Diabetes is a disease that puts the life of 8.6 million Americans at risk daily (according to the American Diabetes Association) and with a cure yet to be found for it, still very little is actually known about it.
General knowledge about it usually stops at it being something to do with sugar, but the basics of diabetes type 1 means that insulin (the body’s sugars to energy converter) isn’t produced, which leaves the sufferer having to balance their injected insulin levels with the sugar they need to survive.
This delicate balancing act can be hard to understand, even for sufferers, so The Magi and The Sleeping Star (MSS) places focus on it by reducing your powers when your levels are out of balance, and boosting them when you achieve a good balance.
Pleasingly, the crux of the game isn’t on the disease itself but of an epic battle between one mage and an army of giant robots.
According to Adam Grantham, Creative Director of MSS, “With MSS we’re using the incredible teaching power of play to illustrate that life with type 1 diabetes doesn’t have to center around the disease and that good blood sugar management is the key to living a free and healthy life. As someone who’s lived with type 1 diabetes for over 15 years, I’m very excited to be working on such an innovative and positive new game.”
A trailer of the game appears on their site, and it actually looks worth playing even if you don’t have diabetes. Perhaps especially if you don’t.
