Receiver II is the First Shooter About Mindfulness
Even if it's not the first to reward it.
Content Warning for depictions of Suicide and Depression.
Underneath layers of Matrix style conspiracies about the media we consume being purposefully made to isolate and weaken our mental health, and the sleeper cells of "receivers" trained to combat it, Receiver II (2020) is a shooter like no other. A rogue-like by Wolfire Games advertised to "[simulate] every internal part of each firearm based on manufacturer schematics and gunsmithing resources," the game tasks its players with operating its sidearms manually, by mapping every exterior control on the gun to a key on your keyboard. The game provides a slew of revolvers and automatics, each with its own idiosyncrasies and safety features, for players to navigate a procedurally generated industrial high-rise filled with automated killdrones. Where the game departs from standard fps fare however is in the player's objective.
Procedurally littered around the infinitely repeating dream world are a collection of cassette tapes, on which are unordered bits of lore, instructions for gun safety, histories about guns and their manufacturers, mindfulness training, and tutorials on correcting common firearm malfunctions. If you enabled them the first time you booted up the game, tapes also might include first person readings of suicide notes from other receivers who were nearly killed by "The Threat," an intangible Evil that has weaponized modern media, negative thoughts, bad luck, and our own pride to defeat humanity. When hearing these tapes the receiver themselves becomes overtly under siege by The Threat and will turn the firearm on themselves without input from the player. Because Receiver II asks its players to manually load their firearm or its magazines, these Threat Echo tapes force the player to quickly unload their firearm into a state where it is completely unusable, otherwise The Threat will repeatedly pull the trigger and rack the slide into the first person perspective, dramatically ending your run. After surviving these attacks from The Threat, and hearing the absolute despair that has driven these characters to want to end their own lives, the game grants the player Threat Recovery tapes, where they learn about each characters' specific circumstances and how they protected themselves from their worst impulses and turned the trajectory of their life around to a healthier place. All of these tapes combine to create a tapestry of quick, thirty second to two minute audio files that are listened to again and again, over and over. They all bring the player back to the immediate moment, where they are reckoning with their surroundings, nearby enemies, and the incredibly dangerous weapon they have at their disposal. This is key, because the game is built to punish absent mindedness in every aspect.
After picking up a set number of tapes and listening to them all the way through, the run ends, your "receiver rank" goes up from "asleep" to "sleepwalker," for example, and you respawn in a new generation of the same repeating rooms and buildings with a new firearm and new enemies to overcome. The only permanent progress Receiver II gives the player is new firearms when unlocking new receiver ranks, and more skills ingrained as intuition as time goes on. Unfortunately, failure carries the same weight as success in a run. When dying before listening to all the tapes required to proceed in receiver training, your rank drops down to the last level, (and can fall all the way down to "baseline,") which returns you to an older pool of possible tapes you can hear. In this way Receiver II locks its most interesting aspects behind not a skill gate, but a barrier testing how careful, present, and aware the player can be in sometimes dire situations. Because of this, Receiver II asks the player to repeat this task of carefully finding a dwindling number of tapes five times in a row to Awaken and beat the game. Despite its rather limited variety of enemies, including flying taser drones that chase the player down and stationary turrets that sweep over the environment with varying degrees of armor, each enemy can be defeated in one well placed shot, and the player is just as vulnerable to small arms fire. One misstep into an uncleared hallway can be just as fatal as the extremely punishing fall damage in the game, where a drop of five feet can temporarily slow the players' speed to a limping stumble or a drop of ten feet might kill them instantly. Shooting a glass ceiling can kill the player with falling glass shards, or shooting a surface too close can kill the player with flying shrapnel. Enemy turret fire can penetrate through most surfaces, so concealment from enemy cameras is much easier to find compared to actual cover that can protect the player from rifle caliber rounds. Realistic ballistic models mean that bullets ricochet off of surfaces and players are vulnerable to unlucky shots from enemies that might've been misses. Furthermore, The Threat has degraded the quality of your firearm itself, so that it is much more vulnerable to malfunction than most real weaponry. Only by holding Tab for the entire time it takes to draw or holster your weapon can you ensure that the player character doesn't misfire the weapon into the floor beneath you — or worse, your own leg — which could be fatal. Receiver demands respect for its weapons, and that means learning all of the myriad of ways to safely store its menagerie of loaded sidearms. As all of the weapons are meticulously recreated and simulated, players will learn that the only way to safely holster a Glock 17, for exampe, is by locking the slide open, preferably without a round in the chamber so a fall from a height doesn't knock the slide loose and fire the gun accidentally. Other automatics thankfully come with exterior safety switches, so holstering them safely is just an exercise in muscle memory. In its final stage, Receiver always gives the player the Colt Single Action Army, a single action revolver that will misfire if treated incorrectly. Due to the nature of its design, the Peacemaker is the most complicated reload in the game, requiring the most time and energy from the player. After you first shoot yourself by falling from a height tall enough to cause the hammer to strike the bullet lined up with the chamber, the game prompts you to "Cowboy Load" the SAA in order to make sure that you always leave one chamber open, the only truly safe way to carry the weapon while loaded.
I have to admit that I've never successfully beaten Receiver II. Despite being a fan for years and clocking nearly 20 hours playing it on Steam, I've only once reached the final rank of Awake, but died with no ammo to a killdrone before being able to collect the last of three tapes needed to complete receiver training. Despite this I recommend the game to anyone even slightly interested in its design. The game is wholly unique in its mechanics: not even VR shooters have recreated weapons to this degree and asked this much of their players. The feeling of panic you get when desperately trying to reload a weapon without dropping the bullets or magazine to the floor while running for your life from a drone flying as fast as it can towards you down a hallway while menacingly crackling its taser only for you to turn a corner into an armored ceiling mounted drone beeping to life, blinding you with its colored vision cone, and unceremoniously ending your run and the high energy synth soundtrack with the methodically rhythmic cracks of gunfire. By creating such a high stakes, tension filled gun simulation the game trains the player to stay calm, stay smooth, and stay alive, all the while reminding them that the best way to combat depression and isolation is with the same attention, care, and compassion for ourselves, our minds, our bodies, and each other.