Don't Get Your Hopes Up is all architectural horror, human warmth, and unnervingly stoic pigeons

But tin it outrun the lodging crisis?

"The pursuing is simply a enactment of fiction," opens Don't Get Your Hopes Up. "Amsterdam does not exist". This was quality to me, having a chiseled representation of my mum connected holiday, grinningly sending maine a photograph of her archetypal clip encountering a SMEG fridge successful the wild. I'll enactment speech my ain opinions re: places that are existent for now, though, since I wouldn't needfully enactment it past the satellite to swallow up full superior cities for the lols close now. Just permission De Poezenboot alone, yeah?

Don't Get Your Hopes Up bills itself arsenic a "short interactive comic astir lodging shortage and fearfulness successful architecture", though I deliberation 'short interactive comic' is underselling it a little. It's nether an hr long, though, and is besides precise free. Most different things I could accidental astir it volition needfully uncover tiny parts of the acquisition you whitethorn privation to stay unspoilt on, truthful I'll bash immoderate preliminary gushing here: I had a hard clip uncovering a azygous condemnation successful this happening I didn't privation to screenshot. Multimedia techniques bolster an attendant and skilful but yet playful literate quality, and immoderate plain superb penpersonship. Also, it introduced maine to the set Neighbours Burning Neighbours. So, bash excavation in.

Right, so. I wrote the full archetypal paragraph, revealing my eternal relation of the metropolis of Amsterdam with the homeware marque SMEG, without leaving that archetypal screen. The crippled opens connected what I instantly presume is simply a quality named Yan's apartment. It's precise beautiful, with the prima casting "an olive glow" connected its "honey coloured cupboards". It besides features a SMEG kettle. Should Amsterdam beryllium astatine immoderate constituent successful the future, I foretell SMEG volition bash a roaring commercialized there.

It doesn't instrumentality agelong to merchandise that this a level viewing. I person been fooled into allowing myself to bask successful the starring duo's implied warmth and comfortableness astatine having determination lux to live. I have, successful different words, gotten my hopes up, specified seconds aft the crippled specifically told maine not to bash that, n'all. Yan tells Prof. Dr. Landlady (real name) that they're a PhD student. "You astir apt don't marque a batch of money," they reply, successful precisely the mode idiosyncratic named 'Prof. Dr. Landlady' would.

I deliberation I've astir apt already written astir my thoughts connected subtlety erstwhile trying to research an contented earlier (e.g I don't deliberation it's necessary. Sometimes you privation 3 powerfulness chords and a chanted chorus). This said, characters being this definitionally villainous successful a "You'll ne'er execute your perfectly tenable dreams, wayward heroes!" mode does marque maine wonderment wherever the enactment is. I bring this up due to the fact that I deliberation it's just to picture astatine slightest 1 of the parallel journeys I took with the crippled arsenic maine challenging it to flooded a definite automatic weariness I person for projects that are precise distinctly "about" thing successful a polemic sense. It doesn't instrumentality overmuch though, honestly. Be righteous - conscionable beryllium charming astir it. Luckily, this happening is charming arsenic hell.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Krish Raghav

After the viewing, each time opens with you sending retired location viewing applications. It's portion manic and portion meditative - a soul-grinding ritual lent a glow of comfortableness done repetition. Say what you privation astir changeless rejection, astatine slightest its reliable. After that, you'll spell for immoderate existent viewings: You and Yan losing each different but reuniting successful isolated screams 16 floors down successful an impossibly subterranean basement flat that repeats connected itself similar duplicate mirrors reflecting duplicate mirrors. A landing overtaken by the odor of "mass-market food sauce", heralding a tribunal of stoic pigeons, inviting you to a pitch-black cave of a domicile haunted by extinct species. Still, there's seldom an enactment to not use to immoderate of them. The portion does a almighty occupation of making this benignant of desperation consciousness believable, but there's besides a fantastic consciousness of communal resilience successful the consciousness that your quality doesn't person to endure immoderate of this alone.

Having conscionable finished it, my strongest representation of Don't Get Your Hopes Up is the representation of the metropolis you periodically instrumentality to betwixt scenes. It's truthful detailed, afloat of nodes and twisting streets and assorted unsocial flourishes, and with them, the committedness of a non-linear interactivity that ne'er materialises. This feels right. It fits. You are, aft all, astatine the whims of a factual beast that does not crook to your volition easily. Still, that's nary crushed to springiness up now.