Dickes W - Episode 1: Der Mietstreit

First episode of the Berlin "Wedding" soap (it's really the name of an urban working-class district of West Berlin!) performed in a public beamer happening on Oct, 2012. You are a Berlin blogger and your girlfriend wants to move to the gentrificated "Prenzlauer Berg", another Berlin district adjacent to Wedding where a real Wedding writer can't live. In the game it's called "Schwabylon", a Babylon for people from the rich southwestern Swabian part of Germany in contrast to the poor Wedding people mainly consisting of multicultural people from Turkey, China and other countries far away from Germany (even Americans, perhaps they will appear in future episodes :o). Unfortunately the game didn't use the well-known term "pregnant city" for the Prenzlauer Berg or colloquially "Prenzelberg" though lots of baby strollers are appearing. So the main quest in the first part of the game is to put your girlfriend the Prenzlauer Berg off on the flat viewing. There are many possibilities to do that, (Spoiler - click to show)so you can create bad smell, street noise or baby noise on the street below the window. In the second part you have to meet the former hirer of that accomodation on a dinner and bring them a Buddha statue. But it breaks to pieces and you have to find a way to get it whole.
It's a well-written and amusing comedy with a good concept, gameplay, and some tricky puzzles. As a Wedding soap, the game refers to Berlin mentalities, but non-Berlin players can understand most of the humor. One puzzle (Spoiler - click to show)(assembling the Buddha statue by chewing gums) in Release 1 is difficult to solve due to some parser disambiguities, but I saw it's watered down in the actual Release 2. I visited the public presentation on Oct 19, 2012, and enjoyed the game even after that though I'm born in Swabia. The player character has some similarities to one of the authors, Frank Sorge, who really is a Berlin writer well-known in the Wedding district. The series "Dickes W" is announced to deliver new episodes every two months.