Max, an Autistic Journey Review

Max, an Autistic Journey is a retro style top-down RPG filled with mini-games, monsters and most of all, heart. During the game, players see what it is like through the eyes of a 10 year old boy who must find his way to deal with everyday life while diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I myself have a son who is 11 and has been diagnosed with ASD and a five year old that is still to be diagnosed and this game helped me not only to understand how they feel but also others too.

At the start it gives you a little info on what an autistic child has to do - a lot of people with ASD would understand, a fixed routine can be a great source of comfort and security. Max, for example, must perform many daily tasks in a specific order. If this procedure is broken, he will start to feel anxious.

In the top right is a Meter that shows you Max's anxiety levels, if he is happy his meter will stay green if he starts to get worried it will move to yellow and if he is really angry to the brink of breaking it goes to red.

Max has vivid imagination, he loves to make up stories to help deal with his environment, it's as if he uses a to do list in his mind and needs to check each task, one at a time, in order to feel some control over his environment. At the start you have to fight three little monsters which you have to attack. Before you start you have your HP, MP and TP, and then when it comes to you attacking you can do the following: Attack, Specials, Magic, Guard and Items. At the end of each fight you get points to level you up which gives you more health.

One of his tasks start with Max having to find his clothes to get dressed, which he hates doing, sounds just like my boys. As Max looks through his drawer you, as you dive in looking for the items of clothing he needs from socks to t-shirt, after getting all the required items he them gets himself dressed and moves down to breakfast. When saving the game you can go to the big green Dino to save your progress or you can simply pause the game and save that way.

After breakfast Max make his way to his room where he grabs his school bag and then meets his father and brother in the car. Once in the car you have a map where you can move a little car about and you are timed, you can also get fruit which will give you the Fruit Collector achievement, making your way down to the end of the map to the school but be careful there are road works.

At the school Max gets out the car and goes in and hears a lot of noises. Autistic children don't like a lot of noise so Max remembers he has a pair of earphones in his locker and goes to get them, but he comes across someone who steals them so Max gets angry and when Max gets angry, moving him he gets very shaky.

Max gets very upset and goes to look for his friend Adam who knows how to help keep Max calm, as they move through the school they go on hunt for the person who Max though stole his earphones. You come across many baddies the more you get the more you level your character up.

One thing I couldn't believe was Max’s friend call him a bastard, a 10 year old saying this, I wasn't to sure about.

When Max starts to get angry he has to do deep breathing which is a mini-game where you have to hit the icons on time you have to make sure you hit all the right icons in time before he gets really angry. If you manage to get them all before the time runs out he manages to calm down.

A few times in my playthrough I felt so sorry for Max and it's so upsetting seeing how he gets so angry with himself, I’ve seen it a lot in my eldest boy where he can't control his anger unless we make him do deep breathing.

I did quite like the way the graphics looked, the way the surrounding school or home looked was very detailed the way a RPG should. The music changes when something happens, such as when it changes for battles along the lines of Final Fantasy VII. I liked it on the whole.

Also in the game I noticed a few times they quoted pop culture such as Lord of the Rings, and once I saw it scroll to Han Solo shooting some alien from Star Wars. My favorite of all was seeing Jon Snow from Game of Thrones where he said “You must hurry! Winter is coming...”

Towards the end of the game you find out that Max has three siblings named Jimmy, Charles & Elisabeth all of whom you control in battle. One niggle I had with this, was when a boss managed to put all four of them to sleep, and I had no way to wake them up without forcing the game to close.

You also can get achievements which there are 27 of them and so far I have 22, so not so bad for a full six hours playing it. Honestly I think it's very good value for money at less than a fiver, and because some of the proceeds are going to charity I’d be happy paying more.