Often the games we play are empowering like taking down the entire Greek pantheon or running your lancer through the Locust hordes. But few ever put you in a place of dis-empowerment. A true struggle to make ends meet. The game Spent created by UMD (Urban Ministries of Durham) and McKinney a group of creative folks, is just that.

The game tasks you with surviving with a choice of three low paying jobs and only a thousand dollars to make it to the rigors of life as someone who’s only a mistake away from homelessness. You’ll have to decide whether to have your kid get a tutor if he/she is failing in class, pay gas or electric bill and even how far you live from work. All of these things factor in and change based on how much stress you take on yourself.

For example if you’re working all the time, you get stressed out and either forced to get medication, see a shrink or ignore it. After you choose one, a factoid about how this affects people in real world scenarios pops up. Some of the options given for other scenario’s ask you to ask a friend for help which links directly to your Facebook to inform people about you playing the game. It’s an interesting twist as it is the closest thing to actually asking people for help in real life. I restrained myself at first from this course of action but then I realized that I couldn’t shoulder the burden alone. I know this sounds all trifling since it was only a game but I rarely ask people for help in real life.

Now the game isn’t the most dynamic, since I played it several times now I’ve noticed certain decisions are finite with the same outcome. But that still doesn’t take away the impact of the impression the game left on me. Some of the games specifics aren’t as relevant to me since I live in Canada and I have free health care. Because of that I noticed some of those choices really had me wondering on what to do since I’ve never faced anything like it.

Overall the game should be played by everyone, its less that 2 minutes of your time and may give you a taste of something a little more realistic and palpable in a video games.