cross-posted from: https://lemmy.perthchat.org/post/224417
I bumped into one, but it was a one button click to get a job
My ideas, which is based off people I've met.:
Realistic can go a few ways, prob a good idea is like a difficulty/character selection.
One character: homeless, addicted to meth, has permanent meth induced schizophrenia. If your character doesn't take a dosage every few hours/days, starts taking pokemonesce poison damage to imitate withdrawal. When taking dosage, every now and then have a big schizophrenia episode and get banned from homeless shelters. Frequently jumped on the streets by hoodlums/homeless. Has 7 kids, 4 in foster care, 3 with exes
Character 2: mother with 5 kids, works minimum wage full time. Chronically dates domestic abusers. As in, suffers like poison damage when not dating an POS. Sleeps 3 hours a day. Home has severe cockroaches, led paint that damaged kids brains. Been formally evicted, so is on a blacklist from non hood jobs. No family support.
Character 3: teenage kid of character 1 or 2. Learning disorder gives bad grades. Dropped out of school. Went to a bad school and has bad influence friends. Doesn't believe in working a reg job to earn income, but sells drugs to earn money bc his friends do that.
Etc
It's be interesting to actually go from that to the American dream of having reasonable job, having adequate housing as oppose to substandard housing, etc
If you're wondering, the people irl I'm thinking about never made it further. Character 1 died from fentanyl overdose, character 2 when WGTOW (women gone their own way) but hasn't improved things further. Didn't ask her that that much about how she managed to stop dating POSes. Character 3 ended up in prison for murder.
I'm not sure what game play would look like. Ex, what would game play look like of going to therapy? Might work best as like a visual novel/point and click.