Curate of Curiosities

There are two main things that these next two games have in common. While every other Molleindustria game that I've covered is about how our society is broken, these two games put you in a position where you can take steps to fix it. The other thing is that both of them involve cards as their main mechanic, although one uses index cards and the other uses trading cards.

First up is Democratic Socialism Simulator, released on itch.io and Steam in 2020. It is Molleindustria's first paid game, which gave me the distinct impression that they had sold out.

It places you in the role of a new presidential administration, with the explicit goal of bringing the United States one step closer to socialism.

Your success in doing so is measured by the red bar with a fist below it on the lower right corner of the screen, representing the "People's Power." The other bars next to it represent your administration's budget, and the country's carbon emissions, which it is your secondary goal to reduce.

While we're on the topic of the interface, the window on the bottom of the screen represents your voting base. The closer the voters are to the front, the more they agree with your policies.

As for the main mechanic, you are given proposals from your cabinet, represented by cards, and you have to swipe left or right to approve or reject them, a mechanic taken straight from the mobile game Reigns, which in turn, was inspired by the Tinder app.

Now, there are some proposals that will give you nigh universal approval with no immediate drawbacks, such as canceling student debt.

Of course, putting these proposals into action costs money, and if you're too careless, then you can easily find yourself facing a deficit.

There are also those that require your party to have enough seats in Congress before you can approve them. This one is presented to you pretty early in the game, so I guess it's meant to show you that you can't expect to get everything approved.

Cool. Reminds me a bit of the Star Wars initiative, but okay.

As I may have mentioned, Molleindustria is not afraid of showing its left-wing stripes. Here, we have an obvious reference to Jacobin Magazine.

But never mind that, the midterm results are in, and our party is still in control of Congress! Surely under our guidance, there's nothing that can stand between us and bringing power to the people!

Except for the looming specter of budget deficit, of course. Eh, I'm sure the voters won't mind that much, will they?

Well...at least we still have a majority?

Firstly, it's not surprising at all that the civil rights representative is a black panther.

Secondly, where's Leif Erikson Day?

As for the deficit, while I am tempted to just ignore it and leave it for the next guy, we wouldn't want to completely put off the voting public from our policies, right?

Well, it was either that, raise taxes on everyone, or go further into deficit.

Too bad that the super-rich have ways of evading taxes, whether it be modern art or making suspiciously generous donations.

But despite all of that, not only did we finish our term in the black, but we greatly reduced emissions and mobilized the working class.

Before we move on, I'd like to discuss the animal symbolism behind all the members of your staff. Aside from the black panther mentioned above, we have:

• The press secretary being represented by a peacock, likely representing NBC,
• The treasurer being represented by a squirrel, because they store things up,
• The union leader being represented by a beaver, possibly due to an association with construction,



• And the environmentalist being represented by a polar bear, as they are native to the part of the world that stands to be hardest hit by climate change.

Our next game is Green New Deal Simulator, released for free on itch.io and Steam on May 2023.

Remember how Democratic Socialism Simulator had you reducing emissions as a secondary goal? Well here, it's your primary goal. To that end, you are given a stack of trading cards that represent various actions to be taken, such as promoting public transportation, building power plants or wind farms, or building power lines to connect parts of the country. In other words, all the things that are currently being promoted in our media as solutions to climate change.

But you can't just plant them willy-nilly and try to speedrun your way to Net Zero, even if there is a time limit. First of all, taking actions costs money, and if you don't have enough, you're forced to either hold the card to use later or skip your turn to gain money. Second of all, a lot of the actions that you can take have the side effect of increasing unemployment in certain areas, due to them disrupting industries that are involved in fossil fuel production.

For example, promoting public transportation will increase unemployment in areas that refine oil, and promoting electric vehicles (which becomes available late in the game) will do the same to car-producing areas. Furthermore, sometimes a disaster will strike, either ecological or otherwise, that all have the same effect, increasing unemployment in some area or another. This may seem like a simplistic view of the effects of climate change, mainly because it is.

You also get Green Tech Lab cards, which you can use to develop new green technology, which is added to your deck. The description for the card says it's cheaper if you place it near a research area, and since it doesn't raise unemployment anywhere, there's no reason not to place them anywhere else.

While most of the green tech that the labs offer are useful, such as offshore wind farms or nuclear plants, you may end up getting the nuclear fusion research card instead. Since in the real world, viable nuclear fusion technology is always "thirty years away", it will never do anything in-game but waste your money, at least from what I've seen.

Speaking of disrupting industries, if you're too careless with the nation's unemployment, you'll be told that since unemployment has risen throughout the nation, you'll be given a job training program card that reduces it in one area by training legacy workers. Meanwhile, after you manage to reduce emissions by enough, you'll receive a carbon tax card, whose gameplay function is to increase the amount of money you get from skipping your turn. I didn't bother with it, since it had the side effect of drastically increasing unemployment.

If you fail to bring emissions to zero before time runs out, the nation will fall into chaos, forcing it into authoritarian rule. If you do, on the other hand, you'll be told that, in the real world, achieving Net Zero won't be so easy. An actual quote from the game:

You may have to put up some wholesome barricades to get to this point.

I have no idea what that means, and I'm not sure I want to find out.

At least the developers seem to realize just how difficult it is to reach this goal. I've played through this game a number of times since its release, and about two thirds of them have ended with me achieving Net Zero. I like how they also seem to be aware of how useful nuclear power can be in reducing emissions, as in game, they produce the most amount of green energy by far.

In truth, the main thing that you can say about this game is that it's yet another Molleindustria title; extremely heavy-handed with its message, wearing its left-wing political stance on its sleeve, yet handling its often serious subject matter in a grimly humorous way. It's not quite their best game, but it's still enjoyable enough to be worth talking about.