Papers, Please
This year is the 10th anniversary of Lucas Pope’s wrenching game about being a border officer in the functional communist country of Arstotzka, deciding when to turn desperate people away and when to risk your job but save your conscience by letting them slip by. It remains an impactful and illuminating exploration of how documentation can save or cost lives, and the moral and human cost of border enforcement.
Bury Me, My Love
Your wife, Nour, has finally decided to risk getting out of Syria as the bombs keep falling – but you must stay behind, to look after your mother and grandfather. In this game, you are not the person fleeing but the person trying to survive back home, waiting for text message updates or an occasional photo and doing your best to give good advice from afar. An affecting work of interactive fiction told through the medium of the smartphone.
Grand Theft Auto IV
Arriving in New York, Nico Bellic hopes to escape a life of petty crime but finds himself drawn inexorably back in. Underneath this blockbuster series’ chaotic violence is a story about arriving in a new place, hoping for a new life and getting sucked under.
Syrian Journey
Created by BBC reporter Mamdouh Akbiek and researcher Eloise Dicker, Syrian Journey formed part of the corporation’s coverage of the war in Syria – a brave experiment in interactive journalism. Taking the form of a text adventure, it asks players to guide a male or female refugee out of the country, with authentic and harrowing detail. It’s based on lived accounts and thorough research, and is still available on the BBC website.
Finding Home
An innovative smartphone game in which you take over the phone of 16-year-old Rohingya refugee Kathija who has fled to Malaysia and must survive with no home, no help and no legal status. Played through a simulated OS, complete with various apps and a messaging service, it is a highly immersive experience.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
A very different type of immigration story, with you playing as Eivor, a Norse warrior looking to settle with their clan in the North of England. Although this is a mainstream action game, it makes an effort to explore the conflicting challenges of making a new home in a new country, from hostile locals to the pull of old-world religious, cultural and societal expectations.
Venba
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It’s not out until later this year, but the trailer promises something really interesting – a narrative cooking sim. You play as an Indian mother who emigrates to Canada in the 1980s and sets out to relearn and restore her family’s lost recipes by experimenting with various menus and ingredients. A delicious allegory on heritage and community, this is one to watch.
Not Tonight
Similar to Papers, Please in its focus on identity cards and point-of-entry politics, Not Tonight is set in a semi-fictionalised post-Brexit Britain where you play as a European immigrant to the UK desperately trying to make a living as a night club bouncer. The satire is as subtle as a breezeblock through a shop window, but the game’s depiction of underclass survivors in an authoritarian state remains chilling.
Homeworld
This fresh take on the real-time strategy genre sees an alien civilisation taking to the stars when an ancient enemy destroys its planet. Although Relic Entertainment’s acclaimed release is essentially a space combat game, the narrative is all about the last survivors of an entire race trekking across the cosmos looking for a new home.
The Night Fisherman
An extremely short but incredibly potent tale of people-smuggling on the English Channel. The less you know going into it the better, but as an allegory on the fear and demonisation inherent in “illegal” immigration between France and Britain, it couldn’t be more timely.
