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Review
I felt a strong connection to a lot of the material in this game. You are an alien visiting the Human Resources Administration to sign up for SNAP benefits. In the process, you learn a lot about how human bureaucracy impedes and hurts others.
When I was first married at 26, we got a little government income from a disability program my ex had been on before marriage. There were tons of restrictions; for instance, we weren't allowed to have savings over around $500 or $1000 (so we had financial pressure to not establish any emergency savings and be more irresponsible). After almost a year, the government told us that we hadn't properly reported my income and we had to pay back thousands of dollars. I told them that our bank account didn't even have half of that, and they said, "Are you offering to pay off half of it now? If you do, we'll forgive the rest." So that worked out, but it was a real mess. We messed up reporting, they took forever checking.
Similarly, DMVs have always been old, decaying buildings (not enough tax money?) and hard to figure out. I ended up with a 'Female' marker on my Pennsylvania ID (which got me out of at least one speed trap as the officer found it amusing when I showed him my ID).
It's not all dour out there, though. The low-rated post office in my area had a stand-out clerk who pointed out problems I had with my passport application before a work trip to Spain and saved me about a month of work and hundred dollars.
This mostly-linear game does a great job of showing just how messed up the world is by making the alien go through the whole process. But then it goes through and says all the same things much less effectively and without any subtext by having a ranting human explicitly lay down the moral. I think the first part was so effective by contrasting the cruelty and inhumanity of the system with the placid alien, and the second part just didn't work as well for me. It's kind of like when you're drawing something and it looks good but you flip the mirror and the flaws just jump out at you; the first part was that 'flipped reality' for me.
The author's end note mentioned working in this area, and I salute Jesse for the good work!
Comments on this review
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hey thanks! I'm the writer - I considered doing SSD/I benefits as well instead of SNAP, I've worked with many clients in that process as well. Believe it or not the current cap for SSI benefits in savings is $2000!!!! in NYC the average one bedroom apartment is $3500/month! To move in you typically need first month rent and one month security = $7000, which is $5000 more than an SSI recipient is legally allowed to save. People do not realize that these systems are quite literally designed to keep people in poverty. I was on SNAP myself in my early 20s and it was hugely helpful though the system was still awful then. I could tell a million horror stories have worked with hundreds of people, everyone with their own unique needs trying to get help from massive bureaucracies. Thanks for the review! :)
