Neurodeck is a psychological adventure game where you use life affirming cards to challenge a series of monsters in a fictional experimental treatment program. Each monster represents a phobia and offers a chance to explore your character's psyche and overcome phobias. It's an unusual blend of therapy, play and storytelling that can offer those that choose it an unusual way to engage with their fears.

You start by picking one of the two character options, Lei and Jupiter. Each has their own unique abilities, cards, and stories to discover and approach the journey in very different ways. You then take on a series of Phobia monsters by playing cards that represent affirming life activities (helping kids with their homework, taking a hot bath, eating pizza, and so on) to damage the Phobia and protect your most precious resource, your Sanity, from the effects of the Phobias attacks.

Each Phobia has a unique powers related to its real-life counterpart, attacking your Stamina or Sanity directly. When you have no Stamina you can’t play cards and if you run out of Sanity, you lose the game. However, with each loss, you unlock more cards and options for future attempts.

As you progress you choose which phobia to face, which cards to add to your deck, and which special rooms you will visit to gain advantages. These choices invite you to role-play and develop your character, or to explore different aspects of your own personality and life. For example, in the Survey room you are offered a series of personality questions and then based on the answers are given a trait such as introverted or extroverted. Each of these traits has a special power you can equip for the rest of the game, and you can decide how your character feels about these things or you can choose answers that best match your own life.

Neurodeck leans into this metaphorical aspect of play and encourages you to choose Phobias that are relevant to you personally. For those that want to engage in this way it can offer an opportunity to engage with fears in a safe video game environment. Each phobia has effective strategies to discover as you work on building personal perseverance and resilience.