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Comment by laristine | Hacker News Reader

"CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience" is one of the best games that gives you an immersive experience and challenge of an everyday homeless person.

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Yeah it's a pretty depressing and challenging game. I beat this game with all the different scenarios. If you play long enough though, you can find a pretty simple formula to win: - Find the nearest homeless shelter that is near a job board - Take freelance jobs, putting the bulk of your earnings in a savings account and only keeping a little cash on hand for laundry and other things (otherwise it gets stolen at the homeless shelter) - Spend all the rest of your time at the library studying until you can get a higher paying job

I'm not sure it's very realistic though because begging nets very little money and negative morale in the game, yet I think panhandlers can actually make quite a bit in real life in high traffic areas.

Being able to open a savings account without a fixed address is already pretty unrealistic.

The game requires you to have stayed at the same homeless shelter many days in a row before you are able to get an address and open a bank account iirc

I have done both spanging ("spare any change?")and busking in high traffic areas of California. Around Christmas I might make 80-200 dollars a day in a wealthy shopping district performing... but most of the time it was a couple of bucks and half finished leftovers, not a sustainable way to make money

During some harder times I tried to survive solely by collecting bottles and cans since I had often made some extra pocket money by picking those up aggressively. Turned out that it's not sustainable at all and I found it to be impossible to pay the rent that way despite living in a large city and tourist destination. Unfortunately I was also too autistic/self-conscious for busking or panhandling.

This looks amazing. Thanks for sharing.

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