One week before high school graduation, you’ve just got to make it!

To make decisions that will ensure you survive in the world of Chicago’s South Side!

This is the situation in the new video game “We Are Chicago” that is trying to show what life is really like for so many young people growing up in the troubled area.

Writer Tony Thornton grew up on the South Side and he was enlisted to write the new game, the brain child of developer Michael Block.

Thorton says

“I grew up in that very neighborhood and my life was very similar,” Thorton said, adding that he drew from his own life experiences to make the dialogue more realistic.

“I didn’t want to do anything that would misrepresent the realities of growing up in that situation,” he explained.

And Block he decided to create the game as an educational tool.

“We Are Chicago is an adventure, narrative game,”

“I know that the people I hung out with didn’t really have any exposure to that and there was probably a lot of people who didn’t have exposure to that,” he said.

The game should be coming to us in February, watch and learn more below: