PC: Democracy

Ratings

Graphics:7.25 [Bar of Width 72.5]
Sound:6.00 [Bar of Width 60]
Gameplay:8.50 [Bar of Width 85]
Replays:9.00 [Bar of Width 90]

Our Take

You think you’ve got the cajones to increase the pressures on the poor, decrease them on the rich, go overboard on military spending, and ban potentially life-saving studies on moral reasons? Well, Mr. Bush, you’ve got the perfect game going for you here. And you left-wingers have plenty to enjoy too, so come on in!

Developer: Positech Games
Publisher: Positech Games

Democracy is a strategy where you are the head of a democratic nation and must decide how to run it. The game works off of a turn based system, with each turn following three months of time.

The game is extremely advanced. I want to say this right off because it is so important that people realize how advanced it is, and there are a lot of things to worry about. In your country, you must deal with the GDP, traffic congestion, violent crime, pollution, poverty, the national debt, and a ton more statistics. In the process of dealing with these problems, you’ll have to make the myriad voter groups such as conservatives, capitalists, and libertarians happy with what you’re doing. And, to top that off, no one person belongs to any one social group. A conservative may also be a capitalist, making him a worrisome factor on two levels. These people must be happy or you will not be voted into another term.

Yea, it gets pretty crazy, but that’s not all.

There are pressing issues such as the rejection or approval of certain bills or appointments in your cabinet, and over-time crises such as skilled people leaving the country for better jobs or an abundance of cheaper imports, limiting domestic production.

How do you go about fixing everything, or at least trying to? The interface is several areas that are separated into such categories as welfare, law and order, and the economy. In these sections are blue circles that represent policies, and yellow triangles that represent pressing issues. You can tweak current policies to do their jobs more so or less so, make new policies, or cancel existing ones, all in the hope of solving enough problems and pleasing enough voters to get re-elected. The tuning process of the policies is extremely difficult since one policy does not often affect less than three problems and/or voter groups, and no policy goes into effect immediately, sometimes taking up your entire term to realize its full potential.

All of this winds together to make an extremely advanced and satisfying game. It is not surprising that it is so freaking difficult. Within nine months of my first try I had dropped under fifty percent popular approval and had pissed off pretty much everyone, increased the deficit, and violent crimes went up two fold. It can get pretty crazy, pretty fast, and that’s where the fun lies. The pressure to act is strong, and sometimes the pressures to act differently are stronger. The factors that go into even one decision, no matter how minuscule, are giant. That’s good gaming right there.

The interface works very well for what you need to do. Policy sections are divided in a circular fashion with the flag of the country you chose to represent in the background. Several conveniently placed yet out of the way buttons open new graphs and windows to help analyze the population’s sentiments towards you, and clicking on the voter groups and problems gives you a very concise yet useful breakdown of their specific opinions and what is bothering them at any given moment. Also, mousing over any group or policy will attach lines, green or red and moving at various speeds, to signify what that is affecting or being affected by and by how much.

If only this game had some good music to go with it. It’s like The Sims music, but even more repetitive and annoying. I got a headache from listening to it, and had to turn it off. There are no sound effects, which are probably for the best, but something that could break the monotony of the music would have been nice to hear.

Another fault of the game is pretty much built-in. Because the nature of the game is complete, 100% politics, its difficulty and lack of real action is going to be offsetting more many. Those not turned down by the lack of an actually changing screen will be pushed away by the pacing of the game, which can be chaotic and will take every chance to be so.

But, these are small problems, and anyone who plays this game for the strategy aspect won’t care even a bit, accepting those as more benefits than issues, except for the sound aspect of the game, which I do think everyone will think it bad. I highly recommend this title for strategy and number fans of all types, and those who would like a great political simulation. Check the official site and perhaps grab a copy yourself.

Overall Rating: 8.00

W.Tek.Hare
September 19, 2005