I used to be a genuinely shy person. Meeting someone in the eye was difficult. Speaking to somebody new was harder. Inside my head there were whole conversations, fully written, and the moment I went to open my mouth the fear got there first.
But I wanted to change. I wanted to break the wall that was keeping me in, and get out into a wider world. And I started wondering what that would look like as a game.
The shape of it
Vertical Bloom begins at the bottom of a grey city. The only direction that matters is up. As the player climbs, colour comes back into the world — not because they unlocked it, but because they got high enough to see it.
The character gains courage the way I was trying to: not in one decision, but across a series of small climbs, each of which looked impossible from directly underneath.
Why it is not only about me
It would be easy to keep this private. But the reason the city is grey at the bottom and alive at the top is that this is not a personal condition. Plenty of people live inside a wall they did not build and cannot see the edge of. Sometimes you have to go outside anyway.
What I want from a player
I wanted overcoming fear to be something you do, not something you are told about. If somebody finishes it and walks away with a small amount of courage they did not have an hour earlier, the game has done everything I wanted it to do.