Parkview Apartments

The home of Perry Simm and Jill Simm (and their son Mitchell), located at the intersection of Southway and Park in Rockvil. Parkview Apartments is the player’s home base throughout the simulation, and like everything else in Rockvil, it deteriorates across the five decades. It is also the site of one of the game’s most harrowing sequences: the BSF raids.

Exterior and Vestibule

“You are in the vestibule of a typical high-rise city apartment building. A wide expanse of labelled buzzers and tiny mailboxes fills one wall.”

The building’s exterior is a standard high-rise on Southway and Park. Entering from the east, the player arrives in a vestibule with:

• Buzzers and mailboxes — the Simms’ buzzer reads “Jill and Perry Simm.” The mailboxes become “extensively vandalized” with graffiti “sprayed across every surface” by 2061/2071 (score event 0, 2 points).
• Glass doors leading west into the inner lobby — in 2041 and 2051 these are “glass doors,” but by 2071 they are “shattered glass doors, held together by cheap wooden boards.”
• Picturephone — present in 2041/2051, but by 2061/2071 it is “a tangle of cords where a picturephone has been ripped out by vandals.”

Inner Lobby

Beyond the glass doors is an inner lobby with stairs and elevators. In 2041 and 2051, Perry can “take the elevator up to your floor.” But by 2061 and 2071:

“since the elevators are out as usual, you slowly walk up the several flights to your floor.”

This is score event 3 (1 point). The broken elevators are a persistent sign of infrastructure decay — they never get fixed.

The Hall Near the Apartment (Parkview Hall)

The hall outside the apartment contains stairs and elevator access back to the street level. The apartment door leads north into the living room. The Simm apartment was broken into during previous BSF raids, and the apartment door can be found already open on certain occasions.

The Apartment Interior

Living Room

“This is the large living area of your apartment, with a bedroom to the north and a kitchen to the east. The front door of the apartment, next to the couch on the south wall… A huge window provides a panoramic view to the west.”

Contents of the living room:

• The couch — against the south wall, next to the front door
• The Apartment Window — a huge picture window providing a panoramic view west. The view changes dramatically by decade (see below)
• Jill’s easel — near the entrance to the kitchen; her painting changes each decade (see Jill Simm)
• Perry’s Word Processor — an old model in one corner, where Perry does his writing
• Mitchell’s partitioned sleeping area — a thin partition separates Mitchell’s space from the rest of the room. By 2061, “some of Mitchell’s stuff seems to be missing” (he has joined the Church)
• After BSF raids: the room is described as “very messy” (2051/2061) or “torn apart” (2071)

Kitchen

A tiny kitchen east of the living room with a sink, refrigerator, and a dinette set along the western wall. The kitchen contains whatever food is available — avocado salad made by Jill (which Perry hates), or increasingly scarce items as food rationing tightens.

Bedroom

North of the living room. The bathroom (a “large plain bathroom”) is east of the bedroom.

The Panoramic Window: A View Through Time

The most powerful environmental storytelling device in the game. What Perry sees through the huge window changes each decade:

2041

“The view from this picture window is the one notable plus about the apartment. On the other side of the old interstate, you can see Rockvil’s wealthy western suburbs, surrounded by the woods and conservation lands of the State Park System.”

A prosperous, suburban landscape. Trees, parks, wealthy homes.

2051 (Score event 5, 3 points)

“The panoramic view overlooks the suburbs of Westwood and Brentwood, as well as extensive woodlands. The forests, as a result of increasingly acidic rain, are thinner and browner each year.”

The death of the forests has begun. Acid rain is killing the woodlands.

2061 (Score event 6, 5 points)

“The view to the west has changed considerably over the last decade. The forest of dying trees has been replaced by a forest of thriving mining towers, which trundle across the landscape leaving ugly brown scars. The western suburbs, once the most desirable in greater Rockvil, now look nearly deserted, a sign of the vanishing middle class.”

Strip mining has replaced the forests. The middle class has vanished.

2071 (Score event 7, 7 points — the highest single score value)

“Through the gray haze that covers western Rockvil you can discern an ugly industrial slum, where thousands upon thousands of serfs live in substandard shacks, running the factories and mines that support Rockvil’s urban nobility.”

Serfdom. The suburbs have become an industrial slave camp.

By 2061/2071, the glass itself is “etched from pollution” (score event 4, 2 points).

Jill’s Easel and Paintings

Each decade, Jill’s artwork on the easel reflects the changing mood of the world:

Decade	Medium	Subject
2041	Bright watercolor	The cliff-top Bermuda cottage colony where Perry and Jill honeymooned
2051	Vibrant acrylide painting	Workers in a space factory, crescent earth through a domed canopy — “Jill’s most mature work to date”
2061	Subdued brown and gray acrylide	A beggar woman, “her face a mask of suffering”
2071	Dark pencil sketch	A “demonic figure towering over a frightened group of children” — left unfinished

The BSF Raids

The apartment is the scene of BSF (Bureau of Social Freedoms) raids across multiple decades:

• 2051 — Score event 8 (3 points): “apartment raid, 2051”
• 2061 — Score event 9 (4 points): “apartment raid, 2061”
• 2071 — Score event 10 (5 points): “apartment raid, 2071” — this is the most brutal; Mitchell himself participates, dragging Jill away as a heretic (score event 120, 9 points). After this raid, the apartment is “torn apart.”

In 2071, entering the apartment triggers the Mitchell Raid sequence when the flag is set, a devastating scene where Mitchell — now a Church enforcer — drags his own mother away.

Related Pages

• Rockvil — the city that surrounds the apartment
• Jill Simm — Perry’s wife, whose easel and paintings document the decades
• Perry Simm — the identity PRISM inhabits; this is his home
• Mitchell Simm — the son whose partitioned area and eventual absence tell their own story
• Rockvil Centre — downtown hub, a few blocks away