During manic psychosis, reality reacted to me, and at any moment it felt ready to freeze into a flat 2D frame, then peel back to reveal hidden systems. Electricity went out when I stepped into stores, and every sign seemed to choreograph a route made just for me, so I chased them, believing they pointed toward the reality I truly belonged to.
While finishing my film degree at UC Santa Cruz, I encountered the writings of Myron W. Krueger, Jean Baudrillard and N. Katherine Hayles, and discovered my private delusions already outlined in their descriptions of responsive environments, simulations, and posthuman embodiment. It felt as if those ideas had formed in a collective consciousness and surfaced first as urgent signals in my mind, then returned through books to show they were shared patterns, not secret prophecies.
That recognition eased the pressure and redirected my energy from decoding signs to designing them. Still Together translates that shift into play, turning several symptoms into a mechanic so players engage with invisible systems, see how meaning emerges as a pattern, and trade paranoia for creative control.