Don't Get Your Hopes Up
<p class="bb_paragraph" ><span class="bb_img_ctn"><img class="bb_img" src="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/d8e5f6aaf2becade75ea8fc2bf9343c9.avif?t=1763825789" width=1000 height=300 /></span></p><p class="bb_paragraph" ><span class="bb_img_ctn"><img class="bb_img" src="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/8870ee91a31a343de13c638924aa267a.avif?t=1763825789" width=1000 height=300 /></span></p><p class="bb_paragraph" ></p><p class="bb_paragraph" ><i>Don't Get Your Hopes Up</i> is a short interactive comic about housing shortage and horror in architecture. </p><p class="bb_paragraph" >Based on desperate apartment searches undertaken in 2022 and 2024, and drawing from a half decade of conversations about Amsterdam's housing crisis, the game moves between fiction, documentary, and social commentary. </p><p class="bb_paragraph" ><i><strong>With disquiet and creeping unease, it dismantles the consoling fictions of abundance, and laments a feeling of home that's always just beyond reach.</strong></i></p><h2 class="bb_tag" >Short, emotional, and relatable (unless you're a landlord) </h2><p class="bb_paragraph" ><span class="bb_img_ctn"><video class="bb_img" autoplay muted loop playsinline crossorigin="anonymous" poster="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/d2cdd8c58ac41bf0845595af3517dda2.poster.avif?t=1763825789" width=800 height=333 ><source src="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/d2cdd8c58ac41bf0845595af3517dda2.mp4?t=1763825789" type="video/mp4"></video></span></p><p class="bb_paragraph" ><strong>Playtime:</strong> 40-60 minutes. Dive into a week of apartment hunting through the eyes of Krish and Yan, a couple looking to find an apartment in Amsterdam. Classic visual novel gameplay meets sparse, parallax comic book illustrations, with a few narrative and mechanical twists. </p><p class="bb_paragraph" >View odd apartments and make tough decisions on renting and overbidding. Experience a moving story about precarity, solidarity, alienation, and the systems that keep us apart. </p><h2 class="bb_tag" >A haunting post-punk soundscape </h2><p class="bb_paragraph" ><span class="bb_img_ctn"><video class="bb_img" autoplay muted loop playsinline poster="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/d587d50bed4521199b77a43922f0d894.poster.avif?t=1763825789" width=768 height=432 ><source src="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/d587d50bed4521199b77a43922f0d894.webm?t=1763825789" type="video/webm; codecs=vp9"><source src="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/d587d50bed4521199b77a43922f0d894.mp4?t=1763825789" type="video/mp4"></video></span></p><p class="bb_paragraph" >Immerse yourself in a haunting, propulsive soundscape featuring music by Simon Frank and a special track by Rotterdam band Neighbours Burning Neighbours. </p><h2 class="bb_tag" >A uniquely Amsterdam story that is resonant everywhere</h2><p class="bb_paragraph" ><span class="bb_img_ctn"><img class="bb_img" src="https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras/9e24f69d7cc3334c4a55a204afe013ab.avif?t=1763825789" data-big-src=https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/3795490/extras_big/9e24f69d7cc3334c4a55a204afe013ab.avif?t=1763825789 width=800 height=450 /></span></p><p class="bb_paragraph" ><i><strong>"EVERYTHING HAS TO CHANGE, FOR ANYTHING TO STAY THE SAME."</strong></i></p><p class="bb_paragraph" >Learn a wayward history of contemporary Amsterdam that is resonant globally. Play through a carefully constructed bricolage of references, ideas, speculations, and social commentary about the housing crisis that attempts to distill fleeting perceptions of an ambient present into coherent yet unsettling images. </p><p class="bb_paragraph" >"State-of-the-art maleficence”, with inspirations from Leila Taylor’s <i>Sick Houses</i>, Joshua Comaroff and Ker-Shing Ong’s <i>Horror in Architecture</i>, and Ayşegül Savaş’ <i>The Anthropologists</i>. </p>