what is Displaced?

Displaced is a dialogue based puzzle and resources game where you are sent from your war-torn home world to the planet of a sister species. There, your goal is learn the to language of its people and raise enough money to send for your family to join you. Some are eager to lend a helping hand, while others will look to take advantage of you at every turn. Energy is limited, so you must choose conversations wisely and use all the help you can secure to set yourself up for success.

As if live in a new world wasn’t difficult enough, struggles intensify when the ships leave to pick up more refugees. When shelter is less sparse and resources spread thin, can one navigate a new land successfully and deal with all the doubting eyes upon them as the home species because wary of the new inhabitants?

Behind the curtain

This was designed to encapsulate some experiences a refugee seeking asylum may face, in hopes to have western players empathize with the higher than ever crisis at the time in 2017. It angered me how many generalizations and bigotry I would hear about these people who were displaced from their home and loved ones, and were living on barely enough to survive as it was.

There is no way to erase the previously acquired knowledge of subsequent playthroughs from the player’s brain, so it is an intended loop that they use their knowledge from the last attempt to unearth more of the world/inhabitants and get closer to victory. While there was a slight bit of wiggle room for energy usage, this was designed very much with the concept of multiple attempts in mind. All symbols that the player translates are stored in a journal, which would carry over past completed games to aid in this experience.