Customer Reviews

Democracy - I Want You To Run This Country!

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Excellent game at an excellent price, especially if you are into stat-based sim/strategy games.

The game covers a huge span of political issues that must be managed. Environment, abortion, gun control, education, military spending; the list goes on. Voter responses to your choices are realistically simulated, and many issues interconnect to greatly deepen gameplay. The game is also very open-ended, so it doesn't matter if you lean liberal, conservative, capitalist, socialist, fascist, or straight up totalitarian; the game let's you run your country the way YOU want to with no limitations outside the need to appeal to some segment of the voting population.

Production values are also quite nice, with a slick and attractive interface and good ambient audio. Highly recommended.

The first time I sat down with Democracy I didn't stop until I had played through several different terms as president. It can be quite a bit more addictive than I would have expected. The variety of factors that affect your popularity as a nation's leader can be difficult to balance. No matter how much you think a course of action is right, the different groups of citizens will have their own opinions. The addictiveness, for me, comes in trying to get the perfect balance between the varied groups.

This is a game driven by statistics. If you are the type of person who doesn't have the mental capacity to look beyond flashy, whizbang graphics, then you aren't even the target market. No matter what the big publishers' marketing departments would have you believe, graphics do not make a game. Games are made, and broken, by the quality of gameplay. Democracy is all about gameplay.

I've purchased several Positech games. To date, Democracy has gotten the most play time out of me. It doesn't require a significant time investment in one sitting, which is a boon. I have a career and family to deal with and am constantly on the lookout for games I can enjoy in short bursts. I'm also not a fan of casual games, though Democracy it's rather hard for me to call Democracy 'casual'. It's not hardcore either, but is at a sweet spot somewhere in between. It has the potential to appeal to a wide audience, I think.

It's fun to play and OK, but gets old pretty quick. The same things keep happening over and over again, and there really isn't much difference between the different countries in-game. Would have been better if the stats matched up realistically (ie the US much more conservative than Canada/Europe, Sweden and France very liberal, etc.) Some things they get downright wrong - the US doesn't have a national sales tax in the real world - the game also has the US defaulting to police not being armed!) If they would have done a bit more research and added more variety it could have been 5 stars, but these problems distract and get repetitive. The game also shuts down sometimes for no reason.

It's an EXCELLENT 1-dimensional game on various domestic policies and their dependencies when running a country.


DOMESTIC POLICIES
For example, it's not possible to eliminate Organised Crimes category, without tackling Violent Crimes category, which grows from Crime category.

However to resolve the Crime category, the player has to improve budgeting for various Policing category and Unemployment category. Thus, the focus on the dependencies of internal policies is fairly educational and well thought-out.


FOREIGN AND MILIARY ADVENTURES
If you are looking forth on adventures on Military and Foreign categories, you would be disappointed. They are stand-alone categories, mostly affecting internal stability. There are no interactions with neighboring countries on subsequently the impacts of the policies.


OTHERS
At this point, I must admit I did not try out various extreme scenarios by taking extreme Religious, Conservative or Liberal positions in terms game-play to test out its full potentials.

That brings me to what I feel as a somehow a potential short-coming of this game. Somehow, it felt like a 1-off game play, that doesn't attracts the player back to test out different cases and observe different outcome/reward. However, the feeling stated could be tied to only my individual experience.


CONCLUSION
Finally, I give this nice game a 3 stars for the educational and well thought-out policies. Personally had it attract me to go back and play, I would have given it a 4 stars.

(I understand this nice game is designed by only a single developer, which is very encouraging).

This game is a nice overview of the policies that are currently being considered by our government and policies currently followed in Europe and the impact the might have should they be implemented in different countries.

The game has many, many policies you can implement or cancel. Within each policy, you might tweak it with either money (reducing or increasing funding, tax rate, etc.) or being more or less liberal (such as legalizing marijuana or all drugs, or strict or no gun controls).

Depending on the country, you will start off with certain policies (more social policies in Europe v. the U.S.), different budgets (bigger in the U.S. v. smaller in Sweden)and different deficits (huge in the U.S., big in France, small or non-existing in smaller countries).

The game has unforeseen events that occur every few turns. However, these tend to be repetitive and exactly the same no matter what country you are playing. After a few rounds, you kind of know what "unforeseen" events are coming. This kills the replay value.

Also, once you know the secret (balance the budget, tax the rich, don't tax the poor and middle class, reduce military spending, and provide every conceivable social service you can imagine - healthcare, childcare, school lunches, free public transportation, etc.) it loses its replay value. If you follow this strategy, you are a guaranteed winner every single time.

In sum, it's fun for a few plays (maybe 5) but I don't really see myself playing it anymore. Good thing it doesn't break the piggy bank.

Doomed to fail no matter what you do. Regardless of how well you start every one turns against you. After that, it's all down hill.

This game is boring. It is heavily stat-based gameplay and offers no compelling visual flare at all.

I have researched the creator of the game and he has found a niche making games which are stat driven and dull. I wonder when playing this if the creators perhaps lack the skill to make a proper game. Perhaps their coding skills are limited to these boring statistic games? I don't know. The music is terrible too.

To sum up: overpriced, boring gameplay, poor graphics and user interface. Avoid.