Curate of Curiosities

We've just seen Bay12's first attempt at emulating an epic fantasy world, so now let's go with something a bit more grounded.

Liberal Crime Squad is a simulation game that began development in 2002, around the same time as Slaves To Armok. From the title alone, you can guess why this would be relevant to today's climate.

The game is set in an alternate version of America, where a conservative government threatens to force its agenda upon the country. Your goal is to bring both the government and laws to Elite Liberal status. This is of course far easier said than done, as you are forced to contend with the police, the army, and in certain game modes, the rival Conservative Crime Squad.

While it has been abandoned by its creator in apparent favor of Dwarf Fortress, the fans have been able to maintain the game in their stead, producing regular updates up until 2013, if Wikidot is any indication. There's even a graphical remake of the game, that's being updated to this day.

This game is what would happen if Molleindustria didn't bother with the graphics, and took itself far less seriously. Furthermore, while it's obviously a product of the Bush era, most of the grievances that the game brings up are still relevant today, especially on the dawn of this current administration.

You know this game's going to be something special when it opens on a quote from the Bible.

Oh, and don't mind the font looking different from what you'd expect from a text-mode game. I set my system region to Japan to play some weebshit game years ago, and I haven't bothered changing it back.

Like with Slaves To Armok, I'll be digging up my save file that I started years ago, featuring one Prachi Mifune, half-Indian, half-Japanese lesbian.

I should tell you that this isn't my first character for this game. My first one walked around for a bit, shot one guy in an apartment building, and then was promptly murdered.

But things will be different this time around. We're not going to resort to pointing guns at civilians without at least a small army backing us up.

Our first order of business is to gain followers to our cause. An organic health food store seems like as good a place to find liberal sympathizers as anywhere, so let's go.

Like many RPGs, this game has random encounters as you wander various areas. In typical Bay12 style, there are a variety of ways that you can interact with them. Even talking to the NPCs you encounter gives you two options: discuss politics or flirt.

A real charmer, this one is.

But despite some inital awkwardness, we do manage to draw some civilians to our noble cause.

As long as you're living in the apartment building you start out in, you have to pay rent to your landlord every in-game month. All the more reason for us to smash the establishment and take the reins of the system for ourselves. Or to find a different base of operations, whichever comes first.

Fortunately, we have plenty of means to earn money at our disposal. For example you can You might want to pay attention to your characters' skills to see what activities are suited for them. For example, Prachi's skilled at persuasion, computers, and tailoring, so she

Oh yes, this is certainly one of those post-Bush era updates. How else would this game's random character generator give us a potential liberal ally named Obama?

Sadly, his stint as our ally is short lived, as while we're out doing activism, the police run after us and throw him behind bars. And although we do have a lawyer on our side as a sleeper agent, he can't do much, and he's found guilty.

So we're one member down, and we've barely even started our crusade.

You know what, it's time to start getting serious about this. After all, I've never heard of a successful revolution being carried out by staying within the bounds of the law.

So, while Prachi pivots to selling pot brownies for cash, we setup a secondary team to tag the town with graffiti and raise awareness.

Now, what's a place where no one would be shocked to see politically-charged graffiti? That's right, a crack house!

What the...this is a crack den! Since when did it become a den for conserva--oh right. I forgot the need for a cheap high transcends political lines.

This may seem like a potential scandal for whatever conservative goverment is tolerating this, but it's even worse for us! This squad isn't equipped for combat, so the gang members manage to get a few good hits in before we can make our getaway. They have knives. Knives cut through the cheap-ass clothes that our squad's wearing. More importantly, knives cut through skin.

The good news is, this town apparently has free healthcare. The bad news, our squad members will be out of commission for two whole months.

Wait...dwarven hammers? Wizard's staff? Wait, are we bringing down a conservative government, or saving the kingdom from an army of orcs?

From here, we can have Prachi pivot again to stealing seniors' credit ard info. It's even more effective than the pot brownies.

But we still need more guys on our side, Prachi has already hit her recruitment limit, and the others' stats aren't high enough to persuade any prospective newcomers.

The only way to improve their chances is buy building up their experience level (which is called Juice, for some reason), and in our present state, there aren't many ways for us to do so without rousing the attention of the conservative establishment. The most reliable method we have so far is tagging places, and you've already seen what happened to our secondary squad.

Nevertheless, it's worth trying again. All we have to do is not tag the walls within sight of the violent crackheads roaming the place.

But of course, things don't work out that way. What are the odds of both of the gang members we encounter here being both conservative and hostile? And this time, they have guns, and we still can't just run away from them. You know, maybe I should have bothered to buy the medieval LARP weaponry.

Game over, conservatives win. And all because of one guy with a gun. How...strangely appropriate.

Nobody ever said fomenting a leftist revolution would be easy, and I can respect a game that doesn't hold its players' hands. That said, I haven't exactly had the best of luck with this genre, even with some understanding of their systems.

As for this game's merits, this game is not only really well put together, as expected from the Dwarf Fortress dev, but also really cutting in its message, to the point where at times it feels like if someone made my Bluesky feed into a game. And while, as I said before, it was developed during the Bush era, when the 2000 election and the Patriot Act were still fresh in the public's mind, it somehow feels more relevant now than it likely did back then.

Now the question is, how to move forward? I have tried to play Dwarf Fortress before, but it seems like the tutorial refuses to progress even after I do what it asks, so, surprisingly, doing a page on it is right out. However, there were a few other games made in response to its success, one of which I've found myself really getting into and could relatively easily do a writeup on. Of course, there's always the option to do another playthrough of this game, or it's updated versions, and hope for better success.

Yeah, compared to the indie RPG Maker games that I've already showcased, Bay12 is a whole different animal.