To engage players in learning about the struggles and sacrifices Syrian families must endure and make in order to flee the country towards European countries in order to provide a better life for their children.

In The Risk for Asylum, each player represents one family of five members and is given a backstory and motive to flee alongside their friends. You must make it around the board and collect resource packs in order to safely tackle the obstacles that deeply impact your family.

"Would it be empathy that leads us to success?"

Innovation

To our understanding, there aren’t any transformative games that discuss this world issue, therefore this is a new topic emerging into the transformative game world. As discussed prior, we see a lack of media coverage and sympathy towards the civil wars in the middle east, and it is important to us to inform people about the real impact it makes on people's lives. Coming from immigrant families, we notice that there is a lot of attention and concern placed on tragic events occurring in the western world, however, the same energy and worry are not placed in developing countries as people have become numb and desensitized to the issues found especially in the middle east. This game takes an interesting approach because we are putting the players in the perspective of four real-life stories of Syrian refugees escaping from Syria. The players will experience the tragedies and triumphs of these real families to gain some understanding of what it is like to be a Syrian refugee.

Relevance

This is a relevant project because the topic is still relevant today. While it does not gain much news coverage as in previous years, the issues are still ongoing and the intensity and concern have not decreased. By having the users play through the life of a real refugee story, they can gain a deeper level of empathy and understanding of what refugees experience in order to immigrate out of their war-torn countries. In addition, we will provide players with several resources to continue with research on the topic, links to the stories of the people that made up their characters, and places where they can help and donate.

Selling points

This game tackles an important subject regarding wars in the middle east by experience the game through the perspective of real Syrian refugee stories and their families by working through their tragedies and triumphs while seeking asylum.