Ugh, this game has turned me into a xenophobe. I don't care how you run this country, just stomp those Verdes out of existence!



This was a fun and interesting game with a great tone and atmosphere. I love city-building games so this was up my alley (I was the Pool Party).



A few complaints:

-Firstly, game overs sneak up on you way too easily. On my first two tries I didn't build up my army in time and got invaded by Verde. Because income is slow in the early-mid game, if you aren't already close to building the army base by the time you get the message that Verde is building their army, it's already too late. Also, I wasn't expecting the side missions to lead to game over and so didn't save ahead of time. I suppose the option to save at any time is obvious, but since I was in the mindset of a city-building game, it hadn't occurred to me. I would definitely suggest giving the player some warning when there's gonna be potential for a game over soon.



-In the early-mid game, once I exhausted my loan but before I started generating a lot of tax, there was a lot of sitting around waiting for money to come. Maybe have another event or two at that point to boost the bank, or make the seaport a little cheaper to facilitate trade faster?



-The ideal ratio of each building type is unclear. Unless I missed it, there's no way to see your GDP, so I never knew if I was building too many or too few offices per house unless the advisor specifically told me so. It was also unclear if gov't buildings had a proximity effect, if I was building more emergency services than I needed, or how much actual pollution there was in my city (I had a gas plant, but also 4-5 parks, so I assume that's enough to offset). In the end I got rated as a 2nd world nation, so I assume my GDP must've been too low.



-I don't know if this was intended but the game actually ended halfway through my second term, shortly after I upgraded to nuclear missiles. Could be because I ran out of space to build?



-Not really a big deal, but could use some quality of life improvements. It would be nice to go straight from your island territory to your office without having to load the main city map in between, and I think a "Move" choice in the menu or something to that effect leading to a scene where you choose your location, would be smoother than using items to change areas. Also, it's a tiny bit unsightly for your save file to show the build cursor when you save on the map, I don't feel that that's necessary. Granted, that's probably more hassle than it's worth if you don't know how to edit the code, so again not a big deal.



All that said I enjoyed the game. The background tune in the beginning, the NPC face images and the pictures that appear when you click on some buildings were all very nice touches that contributed to the tongue-in-cheek satirical mood, and it was a satisfying sense of accomplishment to get to the late game and be generating all that money. The political twist was neat and I enjoyed the open-ended design, with your choices shaping what opportunities are available to you later. All in all I took 3 separate attempts at the game, and each one played out differently, so it definitely has replayability. Most importantly the core design was quite solid, it was a lot of fun and rewarding to continue building my city until there was just no room left.



I think you're on to something with this kind of game, and I'd love to see something else like this in the future.