Beggar Simulator: Istanbul

Beggar Simulator: Istanbul follows a man with no money or place to stay who poses as a beggar on Istanbul’s streets. You approach people and make a pitch, choosing among tones such as pity, flattery, guilt or silence. Each conversation gives you four lines to choose from while the person’s patience drains; there is no universally right answer, and the most lucrative line may contradict the act you are pretending to perform.

Choose your act

Each morning you pay for your act, props and pitch before earning anything. Cardboard is free but brings in the least. Sunglasses and a cane earn more, but rule out lines about things you can see; crutches limit your movement, while a wheelchair imposes the greatest restrictions and offers the highest earnings. Your act is a set of things you can no longer say.

Manage the heat

Approaching people already annoys them, and following someone, blocking their path, taking their sleeve or walking them to their car raises the Heat bar. A particularly profitable day also attracts attention. When the bar fills, the zabıta arrives, and you must choose whether to pay a fine and keep the day’s earnings, hand over everything you took to reset the bar, or run. Running earns nothing, exposes your act to the whole street and closes the district for days. Paying the fine does not reset the bar, so the zabıta will return the next day.

Work the districts

The five districts have different conditions and opportunities. The narrow, noisy metro underpass is free to use, but its stairs are difficult to navigate in a wheelchair. The mosque courtyard is quiet during the week, then gets busy for five minutes after prayer; Friday offers the city’s best earnings, but only once. At the junction, you work among cars during a 40-second red light and must leave before it turns green. In Kapalıçarşı, shopkeepers learn your face. İstiklal is busiest at night, when a drunk passerby might pay five or 500 lira for the same pitch; the way he walks can help you judge which.

Two districts are available from the start. The other three are controlled by people who will not accept money to let you in. One wants you to outrun the zabıta and still return with earnings, another wants you to get 400 lira from a politician in one conversation, and the third respects only a clean day.

Read the people

A politician canvassing for votes can be persuaded over three rounds of conversation. You must also manage the audience’s mood, and what you say in the first round still matters in the third. A drunk you meet at two in the morning presents a different challenge: read him, then decide whether to push your pitch.

Deal with the street

A child working your junction with a squeegee will not simply leave. You can pay him a cut or confront him. A pickpocket demands a share of your earnings, and recovering it means winning something first. Shopkeepers also offer honest jobs: carry a tray of tea through a crowded alley without spilling it, or hand out flyers on the avenue while you are supposed to be begging.

Get through the night

At the end of each day, you choose how to spend your money on a bed, a wash, medicine and, at the end of the week, the jar. There is often not enough for everything, so you must decide what to skip. A pension bed costs 300 lira and puts you in a room with five strangers and a ticking radiator; nothing happens there. If you skip the bed, the table shows what you will carry into the night. You then sleep in the underpass, where something may approach and you get one sentence to decide what to do. Things that pass by are harmless; things that stop are a hand.

Hunger can improve your earnings until you faint in the street. Filth can bring in more money until people avoid you, while illness costs nothing until it becomes a serious problem. The game’s economy ties your worsening condition to your ability to work, while each night’s table shows how much money you have and how much you need without specifying what it is for.