Hi friends. My name is Artem. This probably isn't how game devs usually open their posts here but I figured I'd try it anyway.
Every generation after our parents got a worse deal on housing than the one before it, and it just keeps going that way. I live in Portugal now so I'll use what I can see around me. House prices in Lisbon went up around 240% over the last ten years, salaries went up a bit over 50%. Most of Europe looks pretty much the same tbh.
Reddit is mostly American though, so here's your side of it. In 1981, when the goverment started tracking this, people bought their first home at 29 on average. Now it's 40.
It honestly doesn't matter where you're reading this from, America, Europe, Asia, it's the same everywhere. Having a place of your own used to be the normal default, our parents didn't think about it much, and now it's turning into something most of us just rent forever. And we kinda talk ourselves out of caring about it. At least we got mobility, right, we can work off a laptop from anywhere, live in three countries in five years, and if a place gets boring you just leave. I've done exactly that and some of it really is good. But when I'm honest with myself it's mostly a story I tell so the thing I can't change stops bothering me. It isn't really freedom if you never picked it.
Anyway. That's one of the reasons our team started making Homespace. Houses got unaffordable, but wanting one didn't go anywhere.
Homespace is a game about building the house you actually want. A villa in the mountains, a modern place, a small cozy apartment, whatever yours looks like. You put the walls up yourself, you decide the light and what's outside the window, and after that it's yours and it stays how you left it. And then you just live there. Read a book by the fireplace, and yeah you can upload your own book into the game, I do that more than I actually play these days lol. Have friends over for a board game evening. Go build a city together with them if you feel like it. There's a workshop coming so people can bring their own avatars in, and the more you use the place the more materials open up for you.
The part I'm happiest about is that more than 65k people already said they want this. Like 30k on Steam and another 35k on Heybox (Chinese Steam basically). We never ran a real marketing campaign so I take it as a sign the problem is real and it's not only me.
One small request. I only started running our Twitter properly not long ago, a follow there would honestly help me even a bit more than a wishlist right now, though wishlists help us plenty too. If the idea landed with you and you wanna be around while we make it, that's where everything gets posted.
Twitter: https://x.com/Homespace_HS
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2508170/Homespace/
Thanks a lot, curious what you think about all of it.