CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience

CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience - challenge the cruel world and prove that you are able to bring everything back.
This project was developed by Delve Interactive Studio and provides you with the opportunity to face all the problems of society that exist on the dark and dirty streets. You will have a chance to change your fate and forget about your old lifestyle and problems, but achieving this will not be easy. 


The game immediately throws you into the thick of things: crowds of people who don't care about you, rubbish, bars, shops and staffing agencies with hostels. To survive, you will have to keep an eye on three parameters: food, mood and cleanliness. All these play an important role: you can easily die of hunger, or shorten your path with suicide, because your character has lost all hope of salvation, and if you walk unwashed, people are unlikely to want to help you. 
Some of them are easy to fill. Food, for example, you can get from the shops, or during sleep in the hostel, in extreme cases, you can eat from the trash, but there is a chance to make it worse. Cleanliness can be maintained when staying at a hostel, or in a way that is very unusual for ordinary people, for example, bathing in drinking water fountains or in the toilet. If the mood goes a bit worse, you can buy different things that will raise your scale, you can smoke, you can try to go to the bar, but do not forget that you will develop a habit from frequent hikes, which will lower the mood scale as a result did not drink beer during the day, the same can happen with cigarettes.



While advancing through the game, you will be able to unlock perks that will help you to survive and help in your "routine affairs". 
If everything goes good, you will eventually be able to apply for jobs, become more knowledgeable and just collect more money. The goal of the game is to collect 300$, which is enough to start a new life (not very realistic). You have to accomplish this while also buying food, outlasting the colds, cope with depression, get a job while also avoiding the police from kicking you out of town and prevent you from asking for CHANGE.



The game looks, sounds and performs very well. The artstyle is pixel-y yet somehow realistic and adds to the style of the game. The mechanics are quite complex and take some time to understand and figure out, with the atmosphere being the best part about it, not to mention the great soundtrack. CHANGE really does make you think about what real homeless people have to experience and go through, making it very entertaining and immersive. There is always something new involved as you start to get bored and there's a lot of variety. Even though you do routines, it doesn't get monotonous. 



CHANGE is charming, very atmospheric and the gameplay makes you feel pity for the main character that you play as, because it's not his fault that he ended up like this. Yet everyone is trying to get away and end conversations with you as soon as possible because they "have to go somewhere", however the title does cheer you up when you meet good people that are willing to help.

Verdict: amazing, atmosphere is great, so is the soundtrack. Very realistic and sad, yet fun to explore and play. 9.6/10