New video game follows residents’ lives in one Berlin flat over 100+ years

A newly released video game, The Berlin Apartment, follows the lives of multiple residents living in one flat over the course of the past 100 or so years.

The Berlin Apartment video game released

Berlin-based video game studio Blue Backpack has released a new game which allows players to follow the lives of different residents living in one Berlin flat over the course of 100 or so years.

The game opens with Dilara, whose father is renovating an empty Berlin apartment during the coronavirus pandemic. As the pair remove layers of wallpaper players are taken back in time to experience the lives of the flat’s former residents.

Over the course of four hours, players see the same flat through the eyes of a child living during World War One, a Jewish cinema owner preparing to flee to Paris and an author living in the GDR.

Players aren’t directly engaging with the different political waves of each era, but getting a taste for what every life would have been like during these periods.

Böhme was inspired by his own Berlin flat

The Berlin Apartment art director Hans Böhme explained that he was inspired to create the game while standing at the window of his own Berlin apartment and wondering how many other residents had stood in that same spot over the years.

As such, The Berlin Apartment has its own window as a focal point of the game, from which users look out and see history making its mark on the street below, with Swastika banners unravelled and the Berlin Wall erected just outside.

Players are prompted to ask themselves what they would have done had they experienced these eras for themselves, would they have silently watched on, or risked their lives to challenge the political order of the day?