Solace is a “bullet hell” style vertical shooter by One Man Down, a student team at the Digipen Institute of Technology. The game is based on the five stages of grief, as defined by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Each of the five game levels represents a stage on the Kübler-Ross scale, with appropriate color schemes, enemy design, music composition and even gameplay tweaks.

Anger is colored in burning reds and oranges, and firing your weapon creates harsh electric guitar riffs on the soundtrack. Depression, on the other hand, is bleak and grey, and your weapons don’t even work. You must instead dodge rather than attack. Acceptance actually turns the bullet hell tables, endowing you with massive screen-clearing firepower that represents the level’s flagship mental state.