The Shrouded Isle
My my…this is certainly a game that casts cynicism upon religious belief, is it not? Apparently “ignorance” is a virtue, boys and girls!
So what the hell IS this game? Well, it’s a strategy game/management simulator, in which you basically have to keep a bunch of aristocratic houses onside, while finding one poor soul to sacrifice every season to the mighty deity Chernobog! (A sly reference to a certain Ukranian nuclear power plant disaster, perhaps?) To do this effectively, you must interrogate potential candidates and keep abreast of their various vices and virtues, in order to decide who is most worthy of such sacrifice, and who is more worth keeping around to undertake morale-boosting tasks. But be careful! Target a single house one time too many, and there might be nasty consequences…
– Real player with 16.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim Management Games.
I got this game at launch. The premise seemed strong, the art direction was compelling, so I took the jump.
Positives
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Simple to learn - the mechanics are easy to get used to. The fundamentals are not bad, so you don’t need much time to get going. The important thing is how you apply them.
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Very hard. Go into this expecting to lose but have fun. Treat it more like a choose your own adventure crossed with XCOM or Darkest Dungeon.
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Art is amazing. The minimalistic use of colours looks top notch. The game allows you to switch between colour palettes, as well, so you can go with whatever feels best. I believe the limited usage of colours was a strong choice in making the game look a bit otherworldly.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Freedom March: Rebel Leader
Played on hard, beat in 30 minutes. Not particularly fun.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim Top-Down Games.
The whole gameplay consists of collecting 10x 10 People and get them on the main square for the revolution.
Thats it…
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Do Not Feed the Monkeys
Websites like Insecam allow you to view feeds of cameras from around the world, which are on unsecured networks. A couple of days ago I was watching some Japanese guy ins his yard throwing away his trash, and couple of kitchen cooks making a meal. You get some weird cameras placed in odd angles that make you feel as if you’ll witness a crime at any second. The idea of gathering info and keeping watch over multiple lives is what prompted Spanish development house Fictiorama Studios to develop this game.
– Real player with 35.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Political Sim Point & Click Games.
The theme of surveillance and voyeurism is a popular one in Hollywood movies. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a popular one that depicted the allure of, and obsessions with these acts. Now we have Fictiorama Studio tapping into these ideas in their video game, Do Not Feed the Monkeys.
Aside from surveillance and voyeurism, DNFTM also weaves in moral dilemmas and light resource management along the lines of Papers, Please, and presents opportunities for intervention like in Orwell. Yet, this game is by no means derivative. The developers deftly combined these elements to create an addictive, appealing, and unique gaming experience. While DNFTM is neither overly stressful, tense and dour like in Papers, Please, nor serious and political in Orwell, it is actually clever and intentionally self-referential.
– Real player with 26.7 hrs in game
Paper Shakespeare: Stick Julius Caesar (with a dagger)
It’s Shakespeare’s classic play of political violence that doesn’t endorse politics or violence!
Choose to watch the play in translated (-ish) English, or GO BONKERS NUTS AND START YOUR OWN POLITICAL REVOLUTION! Doesn’t THAT sound fun?
Featuring an ADVENTURE MODE that allows YOU to decide the fate of the Roman Empire (to the extent that Julius Caesar’s timeline happened in). Try not to have it fall! Oh no, that would be bad!
Pick your allies, pick your enemies. Try to be the reigning leader of Rome!
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Manage your political advisors well. Some may not be best suited for every situation that arises. Or go it alone because you’re a strong politician that don’t need no advice from others concerning the current situations of the city.
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Work on the clock - your actions will determine the FATE OF ROME after the assassination of Julius Caesar.
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Don’t feel like playing Adventure Mode? That’s cool. Have a sit and watch the play in Not Shakespeare Mode.
Headliner: NoviNews
Ironically, the people review-bombing this game over pronouns did it a huge favour. It seems I’m not alone among those who’d never have found it otherwise. On the whole, I’m glad I did.
THE PROS:
It’s well-produced and easy to play, and it’s a very cool idea. I really enjoy the atmosphere of the streets of Novistan as you trudge home each day and see your decisions reflected in the conversations and events around you. The sound and visual design really sells moments of shock and crisis. I also quite like the vague (or not so vague) sense of meta awareness all the NPCs have of being in a new timeline when you start a new game. It’s a nice touch.
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Overview
The great fun that was Headliner has returned and is better than ever. First the player controlled the news in the nation of Galixia, but now in Headliner: NoviNews, the player controls the news in the nation of Novistan which receives a similar number of immigrants from Learis as Galixia, and where the issue of healthcare makes for as much of a debate as in Galixia. What’s different is that Novistan has issues with a new synthetic alcoholic beverage called BetterBuzz, and has a xenophobic Prime Minister who dislikes Learis and is easily alienated by dissent. Unlike in Galixia, the purists (people who haven’t been genetically modified) aren’t persecuted by Novistanian society.
– Real player with 23.9 hrs in game
REPTRAILS
Where else do you get the chance to control mankind via chemtrails? This is fun and you learn about conspiracy theories.
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
A really fun little game about a very serious topic. Looking forward to future updates!
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Sim Junta
This is a very fun and easy to play game, but is very difficult to win. Previous reviews have explained what this game is about, so I will try to share some things I have found out the hard way. Please note that all my suggestions are for Normal Level.
New Game:
After creating a new game check Army Chief and Police Chief Ambition. If it is too high better start another game and don’t waste your time. Is already hard enough as it is to avoid a revolution from the various parties, the Guerillas or the Prisoners. The most common way to get overthrown and lost this game is if your Police or Army Chief betray you and try to seize the power.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
This game is great for the bargin I’ve gotten it for! It’s a game set during the Cold War in which you are “Mr.President”, the current military president of Risuena, a backwater, third-world country. This game is sorta like if Tropico had an orgy with Papers, Please, add a dash of Haiti, and this would be it’s love child. It’s also somewhat like that game Dictator on the ZX Spectrum (look it up, it’s an old school game).
Anyways, this game is a management economy game without building shit and instead just passing out edicts and stuff. What you then do is balence the economy by raising taxes and creating bills to pass, however, don’t think that you can just fuck around and not get away with it (believe me, it happened to me a couple times). If you do decide to diddlydick around, the different factions will try to plot against you by either trying to form a revolution or to try to kill your ass.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
Mobocratic
Buy this game! The devs take everybit of feedback you give them, add start working on it! They have also dedicated to update this for a year. And as a fan of political simulations, it is very fun now, and I am excited to see what they add!
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
Crashes to desktop every time I try to save it. The save doesn’t even have the decency to complete before the crash.
I don’t know how anyone can give a game which cannot save a positive review even if it was in EA, which this is not.
That aside, the game feels interesting but I don’t understand what the purpose is. To make your people happy? To implement the policies you want, which seem like min/maxing rather than personal preference?
The translation is also lacking which is important in a game which relies exclusively on text, like a party can have a policy of ‘vulgar’, which doesn’t mean what the devs seem to think it means. You’ll type in ‘isolationism’ to ask how a person feels about policies related to it, but they don’t know what you’re talking about because it is probably spelled wrong in the procedure in the program which checks it.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
苏维埃模拟器 Soviet Simulator
Game Contents
Note：Contents in screenshots are in the development, especially numerical values.
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Make USSR Great Again！
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Play as the high authority of USSR from Dec 30, 1922. Nobody knows USSR better than you! Control USSR’s Policies, economy, industry, military, diplomatics affairs. Can you plant the red flag on Reichstag?
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It’s not a realtime game like Paradox games. It’s turn-based. You can deal with affairs at the end of every month.
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Plan the industry schedule according to the requirement of people. Product consumer goods, infrastructure, T-34? It’s up to you.
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Plan the import and export schedule. You can import foods to satisfy people’s need, or export military goods to other countries in war.
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Scheme the Five-Years Plan. Every five years you can determine the way USSR’s industry structure goes forwards.
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Strike Fascism! Knowing the real world history, can you prepare Operation Barbarossa well?
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A war system dominated by ground force, supported by airforce, meanwhile navy withstands the trade routes.
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Natural science, engineering and social science technology trees.
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Can you avoid the mistakes USSR made in history, even though they may the best choices at that situation?
Game Features
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Events in game are mostly real events in history. There may also be magic alternative history event. (Trotsky is coming back!)
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Content based on fully textual research.
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Include lots of capitalism jokes.
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You can listen to Soviet military music and classic music with the radio on the desk.
Endless Furry Clicker
Points generator can’t be upgraded past 1820/s due to a bug, but you need 1 TRILLION for an achievement. Do the math…
PS: it takes several years for you to get to a trillion. And no, there’s no offline progress…
AVOID
– Real player with 165.7 hrs in game
After spending way too much time on this game of the trilogy, I have come to the conclusion that this is the best one out of them. When I first started, I set out on a journey to 100% the game’s achievements, and after coming to a conclusion; I could not do it.
Unless I set my house on fire from the impending doom of leaving my Endless Furry Trilogy-Infested computer on every-night, sitting there clicking away at the furry icon on the middle of the screen, there was little to no chance. I had a good run, and I almost made it. The only achievement I have left is to achieve 1 Trillion Furr, but while I might return at a later date, for now I will be stuck on 99% achievement completion.
– Real player with 41.3 hrs in game