CHANGE A Homeless Survival Experience is an emotional homeless survival experience set in a randomly generated city with rogue-like elements. here are some tips and tricks for playing the game.
General Tips:
- Don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. Applies to real life as well. Addiction in this game is really hard to fight off and it tanks your happiness. Every game-over I got involved my character getting an addiction.
- Prioritize not getting cold and having food. Prolonged rain/cold/starving destroys your happiness, and you want to stay happy.
- Pick up scraps whenever you walk. The small cash boost always helps.
- Avoid the police — getting jailed tanks your happiness.
How to avoid the police when begging:
- do a zig zag motion. Suppose you are walking right. Every time you go to beg, move a little past the person and turn around to beg.
- Why it works: The police only catches you if they are on or barely on the screen. Since you are walking right, you know there is no police on your left (or you would’ve seen them). The zigzag makes sure there is no police to the right.
- You can still get caught. However, you are caught so rarely that your crime level is always near 0.
Framework for Beating the game
Here is an easy way I found to beat the game. I am dividing the playthrough in 3 stages: exploration, studying and job.
Exploration
- This stage lasts from starting the game to having a permanent shelter.
- Start by walking in one direction and jot down every building you see. For example, I would write “rc po sh lb wc S” to mean “recycle, police, shop, library, wc, shelter”. Shelters are especially important so they get capitalized.
- Beg along the way. See above for tips about avoiding the police.
- Decide on a shelter to settle. It should have a library and either a wc or a fountain nearby. Having shops, recycling or laundry is a plus. This way, you can study and not get cold/rained on.
- Once you decide on a shelter, always return to it. Having residency is one of the biggest buff in the game.
- Pick up any perks that increase happiness, because happiness is the most important stat at this stage.
- I found the novel and the pillow to be super helpful for maintaining happiness.
Studying
- This stage goes from having a shelter to applying for a job.
- You want to study hard and not starve. At this point you should have enough perks for begging that you can survive just off begging for a few hours.
- Typical day: Study in the morning and beg when the library is closed, which is also at rush hours.
- Rent and return a book every day — the buff always helps.
- If there is a job center nearby, start trying to get a job. Once you do, the game becomes significantly easier.
- If you have ~80 study points or got a job, move on to the next stage.
- When studying, get any perk that makes job application easier.
Working
- This stage goes from applying for a job to beating the run.
- Find a job center, either by walking, cell phone or by taking the bus. Find the nearest shelter. This will be your new homebase.
- Apply for a job every day. If you get rejected, quit out and return to the screen. Locate the nearest wc/fountain and library. If you found them, use them every day as well.
- You may have to lose residency for a few days now that you’ve moved to a new shelter. That’s ok — you have enough study points to not need the library card.
- Once you get a job, prioritize it. It is your path to victory. Get the employee perk, which always helps.
- Typical day: walk to the job, do the job, study if possible, take care of laundry/buying food, return to shelter.
- Open a bank account to save money.
- Once you have $200, take a bus to the nearest real estate and beat the game.
By rax360sig