ADHD games are an exhibition of my personal hell
Two RPGs offer earnest but imperfect windows into neurodivergent life.
I purchase My Brain is a Stick of Butter from its creator, Adam Bell, while at PAX Unplugged in 2022. I remember seeing this solo RPG about living with ADHD about a year prior and had logged a mental note to research it. Like everything I don’t write down, the thought had crumbled like a dry sandcastle and within minutes had scattered to the cognitive winds.
Purchasing a physical thing will ensure that I play it, I think. I explicitly do not think about the zines, books, and board games stacked around my apartment, hobby cairns on an overgrown trail. My therapist is guiding me through an unofficial ADHD diagnosis, and I’m warming to the label of neurodivergent—a convenient catch-all for brains that find existing amongst modernity difficult, if not outright impossible. I started a nonstimulant medication months earlier and have learned and forgotten two dozen different habits, tools, meditation techniques, and affirmations. But this time, surely, will be different.
