The cost of life is one of the most crucial issues facing families in the present society. In the game, I managed to keep my family members alive for a period of four years. However, I only managed to finish up with 139 gouds. I discovered that the key strategy to survival is the maintenance of good health. Although I initially tried balancing my family by allowing some members to attend to work while letting others go to school, I found this strategy to be quite a challenge. Apart from the living costs that I selected as poor, there were also other additional costs that played a role in balancing between work and health. At this point, I decided to keep my family alive for a prolonged period of time by trying to make some members go to work while keeping others in low-cost clinics. After this, I kept on raising them up after every season. This strategy worked but not to the topmost level simply because the burden of the living cost was gradually weighing down the overall income of my family.
What surprises me most about this game is that it is very realistic as far as my personal life is concerned. The game is actually a true representative of the experience we had as a family while in Canada. We had decided to migrate and settle in Canada. My father, who was an operational engineer failed to secure a well-paying job simply because his expertise and experience failed to coincide with the requirements of the operational engineers in Canada. My mother was a qualified doctor but also failed to meet the standards set in Canada for medical practitioners. Because of failure to meet the experience and education requirements, my parents failed to get good jobs. However, they had to resort to lower labor jobs since this was the only remaining option for us to earn a living. My dad has severally considered going back to school to get an additional degree in operational engineering so that he can be able to meet the educational requirements for better employment. On the other hand, this has not been possible since he is the breadwinner and any adjustments to his work program would mean not enough income for the family to survive. My parents kept on struggling and were able to buy our first family car in 1990 worth $45000. This was three years down the line after migrating to Canada. However, my sincere appreciation goes to the universal health service in Canada which ensured that personal health was not at stake. Their existence brought meaning to our lives as a family of three since none of us seriously got ill. In addition, Canada has a very advanced social support network that assisted us in meeting most of our necessities of life despite the fact that we were living below the poverty line.
The situation depicted in this game is quite surprising since I did not expect it to be so much related to my personal life experience. I guess this is the main reason why I found myself playing the game up to the end.
I appreciate this wonderful activity as it elaborates on the cost of successful living and other aspects of living different from the ones we experience in our daily life. The activity is a lesson to more fortunate individuals who do not understand the meaning of hardship.