We. The Refugees: Ticket to Europe Reviews

We. The Refugees is an almost-great VN tackling a contemporary story set during the unusual period of those first couple months of the pandemic. The art and music are well done, and there are some flashes of brilliant writing in there. A big problem with the game is that the main character is a bit of a "white savior", and even though you can make choices that allow him to critically examine the way he responds to what is happening around him, nothing forgives his original sin of being a privileged European planning to sneak onto a migrant vessel just for kicks. I get that the developers probably felt that telling the story through European eyes would be more relatable to their audience, but immediately being confronted with such an ignorant, self-involved protagonist almost made me give up before the story even got started! Fortunately if you persist through the first couple days of insufferable navel-gazing then the migrants and their experiences start to come to the fore, and those are the highlight of the game. It doesn't shy away from showing violence, corruption, cruelty and desperation, along with moments of tenderness, lightness etc. This isn't just a melodramatic sob story simulator, it feels abrupt and authentic and that made the playthrough that I got memorable and the game worthy of a thumbs up. Unfortunately the other downside of the game is it uses the 80 Days/Over the Alps gimmick of having a branching storyline where following one route shuts down the other route, forcing the player to do multiple playthroughs just to read everybody's story. This is one of my biggest frustrations in modern gaming - developers wasting the player's time by gating core content behind arbitrary decision points. I already paid for the game, just let me read the whole story first time around! Needless to say I won't be playing it through again, which is unfortunate because who knows what I missed? Anyway, despite the narrative flaws, occasional spelling mistakes and odd bugs where a choice made earlier didn't correctly register a bit later, this was still a solid adventure that should appeal to anyone interested in slice of life drama. It's only a couple hours long and could have gone with being a bit longer, but I suppose it's better to make a decent game that's disappointingly short than to make a tedious one that overstays its welcome. I look forward to what the developers come up with next!

The game We. The Refugees: Ticket to Europe confronts profound questions of humanity, shedding light on lives and fates that are often pushed aside. I knew this wouldn’t be about playful distraction, but rather an artistic confrontation with reality. That said, I have to begin with a point of criticism and a clear trigger warning: in the intro (which can now be skipped), you see dead people in the water. Further below on the seabed lies a sunken boat. I do understand why the developers chose this approach. Sometimes, only the truth combined with uncompromising images can reflect reality. Some time ago, I showed the game to certain friends of mine. We share a connection to Sea-Watch and the No Border Kitchen in Lesvos - Greece, and we’re also familiar with the Hope Project and Camp Moria, either through personal experience or through people close to us. And, the intro was too intense for them; they hadn’t expected to be confronted with those kinds of images right away. Before I get into the actual story and gameplay, there's something else I need to get off my chest. Unfortunately, the game has quite a few strange bugs. I even contacted the developers at some point because there was always a nasty click sound when I started the game. They promised to fix it in the next update but that never happened, then there was another issue that caused a lot of unnecessary frustration. At the end of my first playthrough, the game just got stuck in a weird way. It felt like the credits were about to roll but nothing happened. If I had to guess I’d say that at around 98% completion, the game failed to trigger the final segment and there was nothing I could do about it. So not only did I lose an entire playthrough and never got a proper ending, but in my infinite optimism I also tried to reproduce the error just so I could tell the developers exactly what went wrong and where. That was a terrible idea. I wasted a lot of time trying, but never managed to recreate it. As for the game itself: you play a detached writer from Warsaw who sets out on a dangerous journey, later posing as a refugee. His goal is to gather material for a book he believes could change the world. The story is based on real interviews with refugees that the developers conducted. The hand-drawn visuals are beautiful to look at and I really enjoyed them. I remember reading somewhere that some players had wished the scenes weren’t so static, and I can understand that to some extent. But adding animations would have been a huge amount of extra work for this kind of project. We. The Refugees: Ticket to Europe doesn’t reward your skills, it doesn’t challenge your reflexes, Instead it asks you to carry a story that doesn’t belong to you and dares you to pretend you understand it. The game doesn't try to make you feel good about your choices. Often, you're left wondering whether you should’ve chosen differently or whether choosing made any difference at all. The music isn’t a sweeping orchestra designed to evoke pathos. It’s a subtle sonic fabric that gently drapes itself over each scene, sometimes barely audible, sometimes uncomfortably present, almost like inner pressure. At times the soundscapes drift into the realm of ambient textures or resemble fragments of experimental cinema soundtracks; they aren’t meant to please - they rather accompany, intensify, challenge. There are games whose soundtracks you keep listening to long after playing. This one likely doesn’t belong to that group, not because the music is bad, but because it doesn’t aim to function that way. It’s part of the storytelling, not its echo. A piece of musical complicity with what is being told, never seeking the spotlight for itself. This isn’t a game for completionists or anyone just looking to be entertained. It’s for those willing to sit with discomfort and the kind of experience that offers little closure with no easy lessons, but it might leave you changed, in small irreversible ways.