{"id":184234,"date":"2025-12-15T16:53:58","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T15:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=184234"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:28:00","slug":"how-eur-staff-member-krish-raghav-turned-his-frustrations-with-the-housing-market-into-a-disorienting-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2025\/12\/15\/how-eur-staff-member-krish-raghav-turned-his-frustrations-with-the-housing-market-into-a-disorienting-game\/","title":{"rendered":"How Krish Raghav turned his frustrations with the housing market into a disorienting game"},"content":{"rendered":"

How surreal is the Dutch housing market to someone encountering it for the first time? Few things capture that feeling as clearly as the game Don\u2019t get your hopes up<\/em>, made by and based on the real-life experiences of EUR staff member Krish Raghav in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

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At EM\u2019s request, Krish created an illustration to accompany this story, based on the artwork in his game, inserting himself into the scene.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKrish Raghav<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

How surreal is the Dutch housing market to someone encountering it for the first time? Few things capture that feeling as clearly as the game Don\u2019t get your hopes up<\/em>, made by and based on the real-life experiences of EUR staff member Krish Raghav in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n\t

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With 6,422 staff and 31,473 students, it\u2019s impossible to know everyone at the university. But what do these people do once they step off campus? In this end-of-year series, EM makes the connection with six remarkable stories about what students and staff do in their spare time.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

Three years ago, Raghav \u2013 born in India, raised in Singapore \u2013 moved to the Netherlands from Beijing and eventually found a home in Amsterdam, together with his girlfriend Yan, a PhD candidate at ESSB. \u201cWe decided to build a new life in Amsterdam because we already knew a few people there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horror-like<\/h2>

He channelled his creative take on this new world into a surrealist game of his own making. The game, titled Don\u2019t get your hopes up<\/em>, is a visual novel \u2013 a kind of interactive comic book \u2013 based on their search for a home and the frustration and disbelief they experienced along the way. \u201cThe title is a direct quote from a landlady during a viewing\u201d, Krish chuckles. In the game, the Amsterdam housing market takes on an alienating, almost horror-like quality, which often comes across as absurdly funny. The game<\/a> is freely available on Steam and has already been downloaded around thirty thousand times.<\/p>\n

Krish has lived in quite a few places around the world \u2013 India, Singapore, China and the United States \u2013 but the Amsterdam housing market still came as a shock. \u201cIt was brutal\u201d, he says about the search for a rental flat. \u201cIn Beijing, at least you got to see apartments. Shitty flats, but still. In Amsterdam, it was already a nightmare just to get a viewing. We sent out two hundred emails, maybe got fifteen or twenty responses, got to view ten places, and one of those might possibly result in an offer from the landlord.\u201d In the game, players get to experience this frustrating process themselves by repeatedly clicking on real estate agent logos.<\/p>\n

Cursed apartment<\/h2>

The game\u2019s story unfolds over the course of a week, and each day players get to view one or two houses, inspired by the places Yan and Krish were actually allowed to visit. They are the most dreadful flats. \u201cThe places no one else wanted\u201d, says Krish about both game and reality.<\/p>\n

The game includes a flat that is almost entirely underground, apart from one room, descending dozens of floors below ground. \u201cThis is the most cursed apartment I\u2019ve ever seen\u201d, says Yan in the game. \u201cShe really did say that\u201d, Krish explains. \u201cThough the actual apartment didn\u2019t have quite as many floors as in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The moment Yan finds himself in the most cursed apartment ever has been immortalised by Raghav in the game.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKrish Raghav<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Mushroom<\/h2>

Sometimes reality was stranger than fiction. One of the flats they viewed had a hole in the roof patched up with duct tape, he recalls. And in a friend\u2019s flat, a mushroom was growing out of a crack in the wall. \u201cIt looked like a brain\u201d, says Krish. \u201cNo idea why I didn\u2019t include that in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whole estate agent circus never led to a home for Krish and Yan \u2013 they eventually found one through word of mouth. \u201cA classmate from Dutch lessons said her husband had an apartment for rent. And she thought I was nice, so if we wanted it, it was ours. And of course we wanted it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Anime erotica<\/h2>

Don\u2019t get your hopes up<\/em> is mostly the result of Krish\u2019s personal efforts. He had no previous experience in game design, other than making the satirical mini-game Sandwich or dumpling<\/em> <\/a>\u2013 where the player has to decide whether a photo shows a sandwich or a dumpling.<\/p>\n

The new game is a lot more ambitious. \u201cI started by making a storyboard\u201d, he says about the development process. \u201cThen I turned that into an interactive story structure using Ren\u2019Py, a game engine usually used for erotic visual novels. That was quite funny \u2013 in almost all the templates, I had to change the default names because they referenced anime erotica (Japanese erotic cartoons, ed.). But my game looks completely different!\u201d, he adds with a laugh.<\/p>\n

The only part Krish didn\u2019t produce himself was the game music. The synth pop by Simon Frank and the Rotterdam band Neighbours burning Neighbours amplifies the game\u2019s uncanny yet satirical feel.<\/p>\n

Comics<\/h2>

That Krish ended up making a game isn\u2019t entirely out of the blue. He already had several comics to his name, some published in major international media. For The Washington Post<\/em>, he illustrated and photographed the period when he and Yan were quarantined<\/a> in a Chinese hotel during the pandemic \u2013 three rooms apart. On Al Jazeera\u2019s website, he tells the story of his complex relationship with his now-deceased father<\/a> in illustrated form. He also made comics<\/a> about the music scene in Beijing, bullshit jobs in China, and the influence of Chinese culture on Jamaican reggae.<\/p>\n

Making comics is hard work, says Krish. \u201cI have no control over the creative process. One day you\u2019re fully motivated, the next you\u2019re not. Sometimes a game idea lives in my head for a year before anything ends up on paper.\u201d What he finds easiest is the final writing and storyboarding. \u201cFrom that point on it just flows\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

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Raghav marvelled at the construction and architecture of his new home city, Amsterdam. The Amsterdam School style also features in his game.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKrish Raghav<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Hard work<\/h2>

He doesn\u2019t really have a natural talent for drawing, he admits, but he actually finds that makes the process easier. \u201cIt\u2019s not a creative process for me, so I don\u2019t need to be inspired. I just have to work hard at it \u2013 and that can be planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone can learn to draw, Krish believes, if they put their mind to it. \u201cAround 2010 I had a blog, and to make it stand out I added illustrations with stick figures. Later I moved to Facebook, and the comics became really popular there. That\u2019s when I started teaching myself how to draw better \u2013 for instance by taking photos of myself in different poses and tracing them onto paper\u201d, says Krish. \u201cThen I\u2019d edit them further in Photoshop. The more I did that, the better I got at anatomy. I still trace photos when I need to draw a tricky pose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swamp creatures<\/h2>\n\t
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\n\t\t\u2018Pigeons were useful to humans for centuries as a means of communication, so they still remember that people used to love them. But we\u2019ve forgotten\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

The game includes all kinds of observations Krish made since moving to the Netherlands. \u201cI learned about the construction of Amsterdam \u2013 how the city rests on rotting wooden piles and is slowly sinking. People sometimes forget that it\u2019s basically a swamp.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes back in the game as \u2018the swamp flat\u2019, based on a real viewing of a home with one room that, for some reason, had very high humidity. In the virtual flat, a deep swamp is inhabited by endangered or extinct Dutch animals and plants, like the ruff, the narrow-headed marsh fly and the dark-blue bellflower.<\/p>\n

His fascination with Dutch wildlife doesn\u2019t end with extinct species. The Amsterdam city pigeon holds a special place in his heart. \u201cThere\u2019s a group of volunteers called Pidgeon Rescue, who help the pigeons on Dam Square every week by removing waste like string or plastic wrapped around their feet. They call it stringfoot \u2013 it can be really dangerous for pigeons.\u201d He actually wanted to make a comic about them. \u201cAmsterdammers hate pigeons, they see them as flying rats, but I think it\u2019s great that there\u2019s a group that actually cares about them. You know, pigeons were useful to humans for centuries as a means of communication, so they still remember that people used to love them. But we\u2019ve forgotten. And that\u2019s actually quite sad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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Read more<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t