In Stars and Time/Start Again Start Again Start Again does such a great job, especially metanarratively as a video game, of getting across the sheer existential horror of being in a time loop.
Not just hearing conversations over and over, not just watching your friends die again and again, not just the desperate, agonizing hope of seeing, hearing, feeling ANYTHING new…
But also the terror of the banal mundaneness of it. You can’t stop walking. You can’t rest. You can’t sleep. You don’t enjoy food. You can’t even die (not permanently, at least). You can’t shut down, you can’t stop talking, you can’t break. Every cry for help you do is swallowed by the infinity of time. It’s a treadmill that never shuts off and that you fear you will never get off of. It’s TERRIFYING.
And all of it in a clever, tactful metaphor for severe, untreated depression. It’s no wonder the demo felt so personal and real to me.