Hello, people!
Today, a few words about the genesis of 'Ticket to Europe'.
The idea to create a game about refugees appeared in 2014. It was the very beginning of the so-called "migration crisis" and the media was just beginning to get interested in this topic.
Our Lead Writer, Jędrzej Napiecek, came across a short article about people who tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea on board of simple boats to get to Europe from Africa. This deeply touched him emotionally and he wondered: What mental condition do you need to be in order to recognize that a better choice at the moment would be a trip on a poor boat or pontoon across a huge sea than staying on the often heavenly African beach, to which many people go to vacation?
The thought had haunted him for months, and he finally decided to try to find an answer to that question the only way he knew: by writing a script about it.
At the time of making this decision, he was already in the process of changing the industry (from cinema to gamedev) and worked as a game tester on 'The Witcher 3', where he met our Game Designer, Maciej Stańczyk. They both shared common interests and ideals - they wanted to create ambitious video games that would be not only entertainment, but also an artistic expression on important, contemporary topics. And the socially involved subject of refugees - which touched them emotionally - seemed to be the perfect choice for their first, common game.
They decided that Jędrzej would write a game script about refugees, Maciej would design the game mechanics, and then they would create the game together. They didn't suspect that this process would take so many years, but that's a topic for a separate devlog.