CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience
by Delve Interactive · 1 May, 2020
36 downloads
About the Game
CHANGE is an emotional homeless survival experience set in a randomly generated city with rogue-like elements. Explore, survive, earn perks, find items and kindness to develop your character and escape to a new life.
With hundreds of perks, items, events and more, this serious game comes with a large amount of depth that opens up the more you play, and changes based on how you play.
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20% of Delve Interactive's profits from this game will be donated to charities focused on the issue of homelessness.
This is a hate letter to the growing indifference in the world. When members of the development team almost fell into homelessness some years ago, it inspired us to create something that gives a voice to the forgotten and the vulnerable. We take the subject very seriously and portray it as such.
After over 7 years of research and hard work, 100s of updates and fan support, we bring you our tale of survival and isolation.

Choose from 5 different characters each with their own background stories and maladies, then create your own story
Find companions and find kindness. Build a reputation or even friendships with various characters including the other homeless and the police
Build your inventory with food, survival tools, clothing and more... as well as unlocking new items for your next playthrough as you progress

Spend a night in police stations, parks or shelters, spend time at bars, visit the clinic, study in the library, recycle scrap and more as you discover new areas and buildings
Learn about the lives of the homeless and everything they go through to survive, with every part of the truth having been heavily researched by the developers.
Experience a beautifully composed emotional soundtrack
I spent a long time talking to people on the streets and those who've experienced sleeping rough to listen to their stories, many of which are included in the game as "night events". This game was made with the vision of getting homelessness and it's difficulties across through a game that's engaging and empathetic.
We also spent time delving into and cross referencing a ton of literature on homelessness provided publicly by various charity, journalistic and government institutions.
Manage your hunger, hygiene, happiness, crime levels, street reputation, study levels and other stats as you try to survive and escape the homeless life. But you can only do so much in one day... what will you do?
Will you spend the day begging, depending on the kindness of others?
Will you find shelter in the night?
Perhaps you're moved out of the area by the police for loitering. Unable to find shelter, you end up on the streets at night, and you meet a dog. Is it a stray? Could it be a friend? All your actions affect your happiness in some way, and it's up to you to manage your stats accordingly. You could turn to drink, but risk addiction. You could hope for a fortunate event, or make some progress towards your survival.
But you will have to choose. It could all be over if a bad event occurs in the dangerous night streets. Especially during winter.
Every game is different, and with each playthrough comes more ways to explore CHANGE.
If you became homeless... what would you do?

PLANS
Our goal with this project is to raise awareness on the issue of homelessness, as well as raise money for it. We have done a ton of research for this project and while our wish is to portray the reality of homelessness, various aspects of sleeping rough have been abstracted for the sake of gameplay.
So far, we've raised over £7000 for the charities CRISIS, The Clocktower Sanctuary and Shelter.
Join us in the community section to discuss the game with the team! We're always listening and awaiting your feedback.
Screenshots
10 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
- Fixed the getting stuck in zoomed in mode bug
- Danny -
Balancing
- When you obtain the tape player by any means, it now comes with a free tape. Other tapes are still available via trading
Bug fixes and improvements
- Fixed an error that could cause you to be stuck on the main menu
- Updated save/load code to better handle cases of corruption
- Fixed groups of teenagers appearing close to each other so much
- Fixed Pencil Item being bugged
- Fixed some Localisation errors
- Fixed various issues with the tape player
Hoping to have some big news for you all soon! ^-^
- Danny -
Changes and new stuff
- Cloud saving has now been added!
Balancing
- Reduced difficulty for busking on the subway
- Comic Books give more happiness for new issues, but price is slightly more
Bug fixes and improvements
- Improved how interactables wait for your approach before interacting with them, interactables no longer wait forever and activate when near if you interact with something else. The short story is that it is now easier to cancel clicks.
- Added extra snappiness to various elements while playing with a controller
- Fixed the starving button possibly not working with mouse
- Fixed the mouse cursor possibly still showing while playing on a controller when switching rapidly between mouse and controller
- Fixed a bug that could cause you to not be able to enter buildings without pausing and unpausing, alt tabbing etc
- Fixed Restaurant appearing closed when unable to enter due to low hygiene or being drunk
- Fixed day labour truck following you after declining a pay raise
- Fixed some soft lock bugs that could occur mid-late game
- Fixed jobs not allowing you to work until exiting the menu sometimes
- Fixed dog’s hunger showing as 0 temporarily until the first hunger tick right after getting a dog
- Fixed white squares showing in the true ending for addict and mental illness characters
- Improved true ending timing and pace
- Fixed some issues with perk awarding in the late game
- Fixed some icons appearing huge in some popups (bread roll)
- Fixed: When buying newspapers from the paperboy to show the next city event on the same day you get a city event, it would instead show the event you just got instead of the next upcoming one. It now correctly shows the next event.
- Fixed begging in front of other homeless trying to bed taking more reputation than it should
- Some other minor stability fixes
More polishing and bug fixes/request fulfillments this time and some hefty balancing changes.
A bit about me, things aren't great over here. CHANGE doesn't make as much as people might think; it's been enough to squeeze by each month but I also gave a load of it away and its getting to the point where I probably can't keep doing this. I suppose that's my fault for not releasing new games in time and just working on this one for so long, and I still want to add to this game, but the reality is I can't afford it.
In fact... I may be about to lose it all. Delve isn't looking good. I may have to shut things down and I don't know what's gonna happen to CHANGE after that.
I don't wanna sing a swansong just yet, if just ONE big streamer does a play of the game before the end of the year that would literally be enough to save CHANGE and the company and me. You can also help by spreading the word or maybe trying out the Living City DLC?
Still, I'm so grateful that we even got to this point, so many other great games get buried on steam, and I'm here with thousands of people experiencing what we made and that's amazing and humbling. It's been something truly special that's almost taken a full decade of my life, and all the messages of people saying how affecting the game is has kept me going.
We can still do this, just gotta hope for lucky break. I'm finishing up a post mortem right now, so you can all read the full story behind CHANGE soon.
I hope there'll be more updates to come
Danny
Changes and new stuff
- Controller - Y/Triangle is now mapped to the EAT button on the bottom right that shows when hungry, B is mapped to various Stop buttons, etc, various other UI elements on controller are better mapped and feels more intuitive
- Taxi hailing whistle SFX added when hailing taxis
Balancing
- Increased amount of paperwork given by the paperwork boost custom effect in the Living City DLC
- Removing the Dirty Clothes or Injured maladies now gives 1 happiness
- Increased the base minimum time between police spawns a little bit (they should be around almost as much, they just won’t appear practically immediately after the last one)
- It’s harder to get the “Haggard” Malady
- Depression now prevents you from working/studying if happiness is equal to or less than 30 instead of 40
- Various trades are better balanced and usually more favourable
- Bliss gives a bit less happiness
- Significantly reduced chance of finding silver bracelet in trash
- Certain negative night events cause more happiness drain
Bug fixes and improvements
- Fixed a case where you could still get warmed in winter in shelters with the no heating status
- Fixed “Go to park” option when talking to other homeless being bugged after moving areas
- Fixed still being able to move cursor around in shelter menu while night event was showing on controller
- Fixed vehicles possibly driving through the sky during the intro cutscene
- Fixed cursor alignment being displaced after parts of the UI are removed in various menus on controller
- Lowered placement of bus stops and increased the delay before input is allowed on the bus UI, to help with misclicks
- When haggling with other homeless for day labour, their speech bubbles are no longer obscured due to bad placement
- Controller support - Made the gambling UI in the Arcade building easier to use
- Fixed a crash that could occur if a controller disconnects in the options menu
- Fixed police scolding you for warming up at trash cans that are on fire after police funding event level 1 (They still don’t like it when actually starting fires)
- Search button now hides when clicking on payphones if you’ve already searched that one that day
- Floating cash gained text more prominent/better timed when searching payphones
- Fixed a bug that could allow you to search trash cans that were on fire
- Slightly increased payphone hitbox size
- Fixed a bug where deselecting “Fast start” after having it enabled and skipping the intro scene could cause the intro start texts to show when you next moved areas
- Fixed a bug where homeless characters in the park could have talk options you haven't unlocked yet
- Fixed alt tabbing while using controller causing a graphical error with the cursor until you pressed a button
- Fixed a bunch of issues with the Taxis
- Fixed staying in shelters not warming you up sometimes
- A bunch of other little fixes, tweaks, SFX additions, general polish
This time around we're just focusing on your reported bugs and general polish, plus one minor change to make paperwork grinding feel less... grindy.
Sorry it's been awhile since the last update, full disclosure; my computer broke. It got hit with a surge some months ago and I've been replacing parts paycheck by paycheck only to find it needs more parts. Back up and running again now though!
I've been reading all of your feedback and reports, please do keep 'em coming! I still have some requests/reports to get to, but now that game is playing better, I may even turn my head to more content soon... after cloud saving that is.
Anyway, I gotta get back to work, I hope you all enjoy the latest update! ^-^
- Danny -
Changes and new stuff
Day Labour now awards 1 paperwork, (chance to award none on bad events). This will reduce the overall late game feeling grindy a bit and allow you to gain work experience outside of the employment system
Balancing
Inflation city event is now harsher
Reduced number of pedestrians on the street a bit, as with all the new characters walking around these days the city is feeling a bit full. This should help with the missclicking
Increased crime level rate required before welfare doesn’t let you in
Bug fixes and improvements
Fixed job application successes giving a perk which then threw you out of the job screen nulling the application success (really sorry about that one)
Fixed a bug that could cause your welfare appointments to be -x days in the past
Fixed a bunch of other welfare bugs
Fixed menus in the mobile phone scrolling in the wrong direction
Fixed public toilets not kicking you out at/after 8pm if waiting in there past then
A bunch of other minor fixes and tweaks
Current Release
18823984
Uploaded Jun 21, 2026
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System Requirements
How to Install
CHANGE.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
665 MB
18823984
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