In my first experience with Spent, I "lost" the game immediately, running out of money and not making it to the end of the month. From that initial failure, I thought perhaps the game intentionally makes it difficult for you to "win" or survive to the end of the month. However, in my second, third and fourth tries, I found that by not paying car insurance, not paying for the house that's closest to my workplace, or not sending my child with presents to a birthday party, I could make it to the end of the month, each time with a different sum. Perhaps it wasn't so hard to "win" the game with the right strategies, or maybe I was just lucky three times in a row.
But also, maybe I didn't "win" Spent at all. Its grim ending after surviving the month mocks the player for their brief "success." Still, I was able to experience a feeling of accomplishment and some relief when I survived the month rather than when I didn't. In this way, I wonder if Spent contradicts its original intentions to reflect the experience of the less fortunate.
Sure, it was able to use dim visuals and bleak language to enforce the atmosphere of hopelessness in the game, but still, being able to survive by so easily forgoing car insurance (when it might actually be necessarily) or car license registration perhaps also distances the player from the reality of the situation.
I wonder if gamifying this experience in the first place takes away from the seriousness and the severity of the situation due to how we perceive and experience games. The ease of being able to click through someone's life choices without real life consequences and feeling like we were given a glimpse into someone else's life trivializes how we seek to understand other's and their lives.