What's it about?

You are head of the global government, instituting policies over a long period of time to try to guide the world into the future. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it, right?

How it works
Every scenario starts off with a set of win and fail conditions. These are wildy different every time: it could be to increase the HDI of all continents, produce over X amount of oil, keep temperature increases below a certain point or save the rhino from going extinct.

At the start of the game you recruit agents in all of the continents. Each agent affords you one action in that particular continent - think of it as a change in policy that you instigate. You play the game in five year increments - that's how long it takes for your actions to show some results.

Agents cost money though, and so do actions. Not to mention that the continents get into a great variety of problems and solving one often means creating another. You wanted cheap fuel so you developed better ways to get at oil, but now your people are dying of pollution. You're funding tech development to advance but your people are too sick or too unschooled to take advantage of it. Climate changes means continents are often beset by floods and draughts at the same time. Chaos reigns and it's your task to fix it one costly action at a time.

What's it look like?
It looks like a card game. All the actions are represented with cards. Every turn you select cards for all of the continents. Then you click 'play" and you fast forward five years. The looks of the program are a bit dry, but they fit the theme of heading a global government.

So how do you do an action?
You pick from a set of action cards. There's cards in several categories: Welfare, Energy Management, Technology, Politics, etc. Some will be investments like setting up a political or social bureau that will give you a bigger range of actions later. Research projects might take longer than five years but will provide you with useful technology you can spread over the world. But it's not all investments, plenty of short term problems like floods, draughts and political instability demand your attention.

Every five years you get feedback on how the world is evolving and how your policies are affecting world affairs. You also get feedback on your approval rates. Drop too low and a continent will opt out of this global government thing. Too many drop outs and you lose. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

That doesn't sound fun. Is it fun?
It is! Well, if you like simulation/god games. I've always been a fan of games like Democracy where you had to run the country while keeping yourself in office. It's very interesting to see the results of your actions and a game is usually pretty tense. You're often very close to the goals but you can lose your hard work again in one revolution or energy crisis if you're not careful. There's so many factors to take into account!

And it's not like it's all made up either - the game is made by NGO's an based on research from actual elbow-patched professors.

Really? So is it a preachy game then? Like, with a message.
Not at all! There's no informative pop-ups or well meaning preaching (in fact, it could do with more information - and better way to get at it: the in-game wiki is hardly user-friendly). The central message they want to get across is encapsulated in the difficulty level of the game: managing the world is hard.

Really hard.

Seriously. Incredibly hard.

The first scenario features only Africa and is easy to do, but completing the global scenario’s will almost certainly require multiple playthroughs, research on the in-game wiki, perhaps even some googling. The upside? All the stuff you learn is real.

I kind of enjoy the challenge - and the learning. Maybe you will too?

Where do I get it?
From their website or from Steam, either way it costs about 10 euro’s.