Democracy - I Want You To Run This Country!

List Price: $19.95 Discount Price: $13.59

Features:

• Democracy is an intelligent and sophisticated game that entertains people, but also teaches them a thing or two about politics as well. You may think that politics is all about sticking to your principles no matter what, but the simulation in this game is specifically designed to show you just how easily even the most honest politician will be forced to compromise in order to stay in power and kee

Customer Reviews:

A boring experience [Posted on 2007-10-25]
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.

Great Game [Posted on 2007-10-25]
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.

Excellent game [Posted on 2007-10-25]
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.

OK [Posted on 2008-04-29]
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.

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