In an inaugural post with 3,000 upvotes on LIHKG, the creator of The Revolution of Our Times billed the role-playing mobile app game as “the biggest international promotional campaign in the world” for the ongoing protest movement.
But within three days of its announcement on Hong Kong’s Reddit-like forum, the Android-only game was suspended from Google Play for violating the platform’s “sensitive events policy”.
The Revolution of Our Times is a choice-based story game where the player takes on the role of a Hong Kong protester. The protagonist is tired and frustrated from the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement in seeking universal suffrage, but is considering participation in the scheduled protest on June 9, 2019 amid the increasingly fractious extradition bill debate.
Each decision has consequences for the city’s public opinion, for the player’s skills and attributes, and even for his romantic relationships.
As with real Hong Kong protesters, the player can buy protective gear and weapons. But likewise, there is ever-present danger of arrest, death, a total loss of public support, and even – if the bill is passed – extradition to China.
The developer, who uses the pseudonym Spinner of Yarns, told HKFP he is an IT professional but learnt to develop games by himself, owing to his interest in story writing.
He launched The Revolution of Our Times on Saturday evening after quitting his job to work on the game for a month. It is still incomplete, and only tells the story of the protests up until the end of June.
80 per cent of the earnings for the game have been pledged to Spark Alliance, a legal fund for arrested protesters.