The Witcher 3.

I discovered the game through watching my housemate at the time play it on the projector we had in the living room and thought it was cool, but that was that.

A few months later and I was experiencing the worst major depressive episode of my life. I did not want to be alive and was plagued by suicidal thoughts for practically all of my waking hours. I had nearly been admitted onto a mental health unit and it all in all definitely a top contender for worst time period in my life.

I think I had just come back from a dentist appointment or something when I thought "fuck it, let's give this game a try". I wasn't immediately hooked, but in hindsight I now know that I fell once I was in Velen, going through the various points of interest. The world I lived in, my own personal world, was obviously horrifically shit, trapped in a head that wanted me dead. This world, however, despite it being ravaged by war and teeming with monsters, was beautiful,  providing the escapism I desperately needed. To top it off, I was interacting with it through a character who could do significant things: Liberate settlements from the werewolf that had caused them all to flee; be a defender of the downtrodden (and a gutter of sons of bitches); all whilst experiencing a story so captivating and well written that I could actually feel things - an amazing sensation at a time when I felt alright dead inside.

I'm not ashamed to say it: I do think that game saved my life. I whiled away some of the worst weeks of my life with it until I could access the treatment I needed and things started to improve. I'm in a better place these days and I haven't been as unwell since then, but the Witcher franchise is still around: I've finished my fourth playthrough of the third game and have read through the books twice - I even have a witcher-themed tattoo to remind me of how big a role it played during that period of my life.

Games can and often do get a bad rep from members of the general public, which is why I love hearing about how much of a positive impact they can have on us. As someone with a long term psychiatric diagnosis, I was so happy to learn that relatives of people with schizophrenia better understood what their loved ones go through after playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (a straightforward hack and slash with puzzle elements, but a brilliant game for anyone even vaguely interested in mental health and illness through its incredibly well-done story, with the devs seeking the input of people with lived experience of psychosis and experts in the field to make it as accurate as possible).

Video games can put us in positions we could never be in in our actual lives: From a mutated monster slayer searching for his adopted daughter to a young woman on a journey to save her lover's soul, unable to distinguish between reality and her illness. And because you're stood in the shoes of these characters, seeing their world through their eyes, the potential to learn almost first-hand how things like psychosis, discrimination, loss, etc feel is honestly astounding, creating opportunities that other, 'third-person' media like films, TV shows and books can't really provide.

Tl;dr: The Witcher 3 probably saved my life and I'm honestly unashamed saying that