Summary
Few European cities have witnessed the pain and transformation of Berlin. This is the idea explored in the upcoming video gameThe Berlin Apartment, which I got to go hands-on with atGamescom. Looking at all the stories that unfolded in one apartment over the years, The Berlin Apartment explores the German capital’s uniquely tragic past.
Of course, Berlin’s position as a voyeur to history has been explored before. Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories (adapted into the play I Am A Camera, then more famously, the musical and movie Cabaret) highlights Berlin’s change in a very short space of time under the rise of the Nazis. But The Berlin Apartment has the chance to cast a wider lens to a whole new medium, and from what I’ve seen of it so far, failure to take advantage of that is my only major criticism.
The first of two sections I played featured a person on the east of the Wall watering plants aimlessly until a paper plane with a short greeting and a game of tic tac toe flies in their window from the west. The other had a Jewish director packing up the last of his things before fleeing in the wake of Kristallnacht, trying to find his lucky shoes before leaving his life’s work behind.
In the second example in particular players get the chance to explore what it means to ich bin ein Berliner. Through flashbacks, we see a warm reception to his movies playing at his own cinema, and the same crowd watching on with dead-eyed faces as he tries in vain to extinguish the flames that destroy his way of life. Shots of the menorah on the windowsill with swastikas unfurled on the buildings outside is also a chilling visual of the hardships Berlin has suffered.
To make the plight of the Jewish people forced out of Germany so personal brings home the purpose of The Berlin Apartment - it’s the small stories that did not impact history but happened nonetheless and affected those involved in deep, indelible ways. It’s an interesting way to look at it too - though flashbacks are employed, the actual gameplay involves finding his shoes and diary to place in his case, and then the optional objective of perfectly arranging items to also include his camera. We see the mundanity of having to pack your life into one suitcase as well as the unimaginable heartbreak.
But in a city with as widely known a history as Berlin, you’re a little damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I left my demo thinking that the two scenarios were, while solid enough in themselves, perhaps a little obvious. But then if they had been from completely different eras, maybe I’d be pointing out the blind spot of not examining the history of the Wall or the ascent of Hitler.
The whole game explores a century’s worth of history as a handyman, so we’ll see pre-Nazism and post-Wall, including being bombed in WW1, the market crash of the Weimar Republic, and the hosting of the Olympic Games and World Cup. There also may be stories less tied to large scale historical moments in time and made far more personal. I’m curious about where it goes, and the second story especially highlighted the game’s willingness to look into more personal narratives. It just remains to be seen how much these stories can survive outside of the obvious immediate impact stories from Berlin have.
The Berlin Apartment is an excellent idea for a video game, and one that (from my short encounter) seems to be well executed. Using history as a framing device for individual stories to shine, it manages to find gameplay that emphasises the plight of the people at its core. And if people are at its core rather than Berlin itself, it could be a very special experience. I just hope such a spectacular and often tragic city doesn’t overshadow the humanity trapped within it in the full experience.
