Change: A Homeless Survival Experience is exactly that

What's it like to live on the streets? Fucking awful, I bet. I see it all around me where I live and it breaks my heart. But will I ever really know? Not with any luck, and that's where Change: A Homeless Survival Experience comes in.

It's a pretty simple game. It's side-on and pixelated - it's not a blockbuster or anything like that - and all you really do is walk along a neverending street, entering various buildings like cafes and bars and libraries and pharmacies. If you have the money for it. Money, which you mostly get from begging. Click on people and either be rewarded, judged, ignored or questioned. It's never very nice. And with the money, you can buy essentials like food, blankets, clothes and beer.

The eventual goal is to get a job and rent an apartment, but it will take a Herculean effort to get there. You'll need to study in a library before you can land any job at all. And all the time your hunger is depleting as well as your cleanliness (you will need to wash in public toilets). But the gauge you really have to worry about is happiness. Everything gets you down: begging, illness, bad weather, worry itself when alone at night. Life on the streets gets you down, and if your happiness reaches zero, you're done, Game Over.

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