Evil Democracy: 1932

Review

Europe 1932-1935 is a chaotic time in the world of politics; what happens now will have repercussions in the future. You must take charge and become Party Leader in one of three scenarios in either England, Germany or France.

On the main menu screen there’s Continue, New Game, Training (Tutorial), Hall of Fame, Save/Load, Settings and Exit. Selecting New Game will give you the option of three campaign scenarios: Germany 1932, Great Britain 1935 and France 1936. Each scenario has a little information about the campaign, it also tells you the number of turns before elections are held. Germany has elections every 150, 300 and 450 turns, the Great Britain election campaign is 250 turns and the French elections are played out over 300 turns.

After you’ve decided which scenario to play the next decision is what Party to register as. I decided to play as Great Britain (and we are Great!!!) and there are eleven parties to choose from, ranging from the Conservative to the Scottish National Party. Each Party displays a little bit of information on the party, Party Supporters, Financing and Ideology.

You can also choose your Initial Budget: 100.0K, 1.0M, 2.5M, 5.0M and 7.5M. Choosing the party and budget will determine the Final Challenge, the game’s difficulty. The difficulty is indicated by seven stars; the more white stars, the easier the game’s difficulty.

Once you have decided which scenario, party and budget to play you will find yourself in your office, where you’ll be able to run your campaign for the election. In the top left corner is your Party, number of Voters, Sponsors, Staff, Budget and Per Turn (Cash). Bottom left corner are the Party Supporters and their percentage of support. Along the bottom of the screen and scattered over the office are the Editorial Team, Print, Journalists, The Staff, Leaders, Dogmas and Map.

There are in total seven party leader positions to fill in the party: Editor, Protests (two positions), Sponsors (two positions), Treasurer and Elections.  If you select a Party Leader as a Newspaper Editor, the editor will attract voters when printing the party newspapers and leaflets. To begin with you only have one leader to choose from, Stanley Baldwin. Selecting the Editor slot and then the candidate, Stanley Baldwin in this case will show you any bonus that particular leader will have if they are assigned to that position.

After selecting the editor, the next position is to be filled; you are in need of a Junior Leader. You can select Hire which will open a window with five junior party leaders to choose from. To help you decide each of the candidates, there are four stats: Charisma, Determination, Eloquent Language and Level of Belief. The cost of hiring a junior leader is 1,250,000; this price will increase as you hire new leaders for the unfilled roles.

 Now that you have your first two leaders you can start working on the party newspaper and leaflets. You do this by adding journalists to the Editorial Team, but first you must search for suitable candidates. Select Journalists, then slide the search options for the number of journalists you want to search for. It will cost more dollars to search for more journalists, but you might not find any hidden gems out there if you only search for one or two. Each search will display the Name, Salary, Newspaper and Leaflets stats, Investigation, Interview and Price. If you are happy with one of the journalist's stats, then selecting the Hire button will employ them. The better your journalists, the better the quality of the newspaper and leaflets they distributed to the public.

You can hire journalists on your editorial team; five on the newspaper and one on leaflets. The leaflets and first newspaper slots on the editorial team are free but you’ll need to unlock the other four remaining slots. You can also hire and fire new journalists as you progress, so don’t forget to search for new journalists now and then. Once you have your journalists, you’ll be able to start printing newspapers and leaflets for your public campaign. Hire more journalists to dig the dirt on the competitors, do interviews with the party’s leaders, slander and then run the stories in the newspapers and leaflets; anything to turn the voters away from competitors and towards you.

Selecting Staff will allow you to hire Campaign Agitators, Promoters and Activists. You can then open the Map and distribute the agitators and activists around the electoral regions. Agitators will attract new voters to your party, although the more enemy agitators in the region the harder it is for them to work. There are also Protests, where the country is divided into four regions: North, South, West and East. Here you will be able to organise Demonstrations, Strikes and Protests, all to drum up new voters to your party. Holding a rally takes a substantial amount of money but can bring in votes from ordinary folks as well as tycoons and their money.

At various times in the game you’ll have a Commitment Choice to make before the Party Congress. There are three random options to choose from, such as having a number of agitators in a region, having a certain number of leaflets or newspapers printed. If you managed to complete this commitment within the allotted time then you’ll gain the option of choosing one of three rewards.

In the settings you’ll find options for Sound, Music, Video Quality (Resolution) and Language (English, Russian, German, French, Chinese, Polish, Korean, Turkish, Spanish and Portuguese), along with Your Name in the Hall of Fame.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!