Steam Base Builder Fest runs January 23 at 10:00 AM PST (UTC-8) to January 30 at 10:00 AM PST (UTC-8). Make sure to check out the demo for Building Hope - Refugee Camp Simulator during the event.
Join Building Hope's community;
Building Hope: Refugee Camp Simulator
Try Our Demo at Base Builder Fest
Steam Base Builder Fest runs January 23 at 10:00 AM PST (UTC-8) to January 30 at 10:00 AM PST (UTC-8). Make sure to check out the demo for Building Hope - Refugee Camp Simulator during the event.
Join Building Hope's community;
Red Soil
A civil war in Somalia broke out in the 1980s, and conflicts continued for many years. Due to war and droughts, uncultivated fields create famines, and many Somalians have to leave their country in the hope of a new life in Kenya. But this neighboring country is unwilling to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the world's largest refugee camps begin to form on the border; Dadaab, Ifo, Hagader…
You can see these camps on Google Maps;
https://goo.gl/maps/uD3Qsc4dEWq3jCdh6
https://goo.gl/maps/bMRiZJ8s4K2ZGrjx5
https://goo.gl/maps/RSWkVTvDY5AnFyCLA
In developing the Building Hope, first of all, we start with the Red Soil scenario.
Three maps will be in that scenario like the real versions; their mechanics will be the same;
Thirsty will be a general problem in Red Soil maps, and consumption will be higher than in other scenarios. On the other hand, groundwaters will be scarce, so wells are not enough options.
Sandstorms will be expected. This makes aids unavailable from time to time; no food, water, or medicine could be delivered to camp in the sandstorms. The camp manager (player) must be prepared for these unexpected difficulties.
Some huge refugee convoys will come to the camp because of increasing conflicts (you can follow the newspaper in the game). Massive participation can easily break the balance of resource distribution-consumption balance in the camp.
That's enough for today. For your opinions and contributions, join our community in Discord;
https://discord.gg/kDwWGk8JRJ
Building the Building Hope
In 2019 as a newly gathered team who wanted to create a city-builder game, we were in search of a touching theme. The news about refugee convoys who fled the Syrian civil war and came to Turkey was on all channels. Arguing about the building and economic sustainability of refugee camps was very common. At this point, we decided to take a risk and start to use a "building refugee camp" theme.
Because of the subject's sensitivity, the project went through a long preparation process. In mid-2020, we started to code to create an Alpha version of Building Hope in the Unity 3D game engine. Looking at it now, we feel some embarrassment about screenshots of the Alpha version :)
One of the critical points of Building Hope is to give players a sense of the difficulty of living conditions at refugee camps caused by environmental conditions. Fulfilling their basic needs is an easy and mostly overlooked/ignored issue for those who live in the developed settlements just like us. However, even reaching the access to food and clean water could be really hard in the refugee camps because of extreme hot and cold climate conditions. For this aim, we switched the project to Unreal Engine, which is one of the critical turning points of the project. (We don't want to start another phase of the famous "which game engine is better" discussion :) )
At this point, we were satisfied with the results. It's heartening to see the progress of Building Hope, and your opinions and contributions are significant to us.
Join us on this journey by joining our Discord;
https://discord.gg/kDwWGk8JRJ
War In Ukraine
As gyroscoping games we see games are a kind of projection of real life. We continuously observe and analyze real life in the development process to create more accurate games. In the journey of developing Building Hope, our refugee camp game, we faced lots of heartbreaking miseries, traumas, and pains in various geographical regions worldwide.
Unfortunately, Ukraine is the last of them.
With a naive hope in our hearts that the war in Ukraine will be the last to drive people out of their homes, we are also arguing with our team about how we can be the voice of unheard stories of people by using the power of games.
Our first response is to create a scenario and map(s) about refugees of this war. We are collecting data from the field over news resources and social media. We want to add a map of a refugee reception center in Poland to Building Hope. We will announce more detailed info about this map(s) later.
We are also preparing to open a blog on our website (www.gyroscopinggames.com) to publish real refugee stories. We collaborate with 3rd Party resources to use their content on our website. Still, also we are waiting for your contributions anonymously or openly. If you are a former refugee or a witness of a refugee crisis, feel free to share your story with us.
To get more updates in the journey of developing the Building Hope, join us on Discord:
Building Hope - Discord
and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin:
Steam Next Fest Demo & Livestream
We hope you are doing great.
We were live on Steam with more than 1000 people in the first livestream! It was so much fun seeing your comments and playing Building Hope with you. Today we will be doing the second and final Steam Next Fest live stream. We hope to see you there again. If you have questions, you can ask us and get more information about the game.
Don’t forget to share your thoughts, all feedback is so important to us. Thank you for your continuous support and remember to add “Building Hope” to your wishlist!
Steam Next Fest Demo & Livestream
Today at PST 03:00-04:00 you can watch our stream on the Steam Next Fest. Moreover, you’ll be able to ask devs the questions on your mind and get information about further improvements. In the livestream, we are planning to show you how to play the game and also answer your questions.
Hello World
We dedicated our first entry to explaining Building Hope and its philosophy behind it.
Building Hope is a refugee camp building and management game. The idea of the game has appeared after the humanitarian crisis reached a peak in the Syrian Civil War. As a game studio founded in Turkey, which hosts the most refugees globally, we closely experience the hardness of being a refugee. The contrast between cold statistical data and real human stories encouraged us to develop a city-builder genre game based on refugee camps.
However, a striking reality hit us while we were inspecting these stories; everybody is a potential refugee. All refugees emphasize the same fact; none of them expected to become homeless and leave their country in harsh conditions. Safety is an illusion; in the climate change era, also with radicalism in politics rising, no one has a guaranteed future. At this moment, Building Hope's developing content started to evolve from the recent past refugee crisis to fictional near-future scenarios.
Building Hope has scenarios with a couple of maps, i.e., the Red Soil scenario based on the Somalian Civil War and refugee camps at the Kenya border. Each scenario covers different regions of the world, and their maps have different gameplay dynamics.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is our main developing approach to NPC mechanics. The player's first goal is to provide shelter, food, and clean water to refugees. Providing these needs has alternative methods and strategies; i.e., players could decide to build better residential buildings or give up on building residential buildings (refugees will develop their own slum neighborhoods) and allocate resources to build a better and effective food/water distribution system. After providing basic needs, refugees' needs evolve to upper levels at Maslow's Pyramid; education, fun, and sport are involved in the game. Upcoming dev log entries will include more detailed explanations about these mechanics and much more.
These are enough for the first entry; we are excited about Building Hope and keep following us in this adventure.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1723100