Over the week I got to play some pretty cool games, some in class and some online.

Spent:

This game was quite interesting. In both attempts I lost pretty early. There were a lot of things I couldn’t let go of, like health and insurance and things like that, which always led me to lose the game. It puts into perspective how expensive the US is for the average person there, and how in countries like the US that provide no social service by default it is very hard to live.

BBC Syrian Refugees:

This one was quite sad to play. Though in the end I beat the game and made it to the UK, I basically had to be a complete sociopath to get there. I had to leave people to die in order to get there. However being selfish was the way to win, I would assume people would do a lot of the same in real life. Who knows though

Depression Quest:

This one was super sad to play. In the end I was able to get medication, and was “moderately depressed” and the character was looking hopeful in the end, but a lot of the self doubt, anxiety, that kind of stuff really reflects in the actions and such. Many times the character doubted their relationship with their significant other, and would go through things that I would relate to sometimes (being lazy, feeling unproductive, etc). I could definitely put myself in their shoes.

Bury me, my love:

This one was painful. it was a texting simulator putting you in the place of a husband talking to his wife who is a doctor. It goes through a lot of events where the wife had to go through a site of an explosion, take care of people who are in the bombings and such. There were a lot of moments where she would disappear and I thought she would die. I was very into this story actually even though it was just a glorified texting simulator. In the end she ends up making a journey to europe, though from the reviews I read apparently was very easy and unrealistic.

Domestic Abuse:

This game really put into perspective how common domestic abuse is, and how many women in egypt are too afraid to speak out or in a situation where they need to basically keep their mouth shut to stay alive. I don’t have much more to say about the game, just sad overall about how the current state of the world is

Orphan by Heart:

This one was a little eye opening. A lot of normal questions that someone would ask would never strike me as something that an orphan would answer diferently (though it obviously makes sense). Just makes you remember and empathize with orphans and people who lost their families.

Blind Building Game:

We played this one in class, I don’t remember the name! But it was when we  were blindfolded and had to build a structure based on a description from another person who was also blindfolded, and this one was my favourite out of all of the games we played. I was in charge of building it based on the description of the other person. I was able to beat it quite quickly! It was interesting how with just a description and feeling up the pieces you can make out so much more than with just the eyes.

Fun games! Had a lot of fun 🙂