Fate of the World

This weekend, I picked up Fate of the World, since it was sitting around on my Steam wishlist and fit my general price preference. It's a game about solving global disasters, centered around climate change. I think it is the coolest thing ever!

Ok, there are a couple potential flaws. First, the interface is complicated, and to figure out everything that's helpful to know, you have to poke around in it a lot. I had no idea it was possible to look at very specific statistics, like how well trained a country's agriculture workforce is, until I eventually visited the Steam forum about the game (about 3 tries into the second scenario).

Which brings us to the other "flaw" -- or, alternatively, feature I rather like. This game is hard. The downside, some less patient players may get frustrated and give up, I suppose. And I might not put up with this level of difficulty in just any game. But here the difficulty level is an excellent vehicle for the concept that the world is likely to develop a lot of problems as we ignore the environment and keep growing our world's population and commerce. It's not an easy job, even if you start working on it as soon as possible. It's challenging, but if you pay attention to everything, maybe do a little extra research, and you have a plan from the start, you can succeed in saving the world. It seemed like it's part of the point for the game to be hard. It wouldn't be a very effective piece of Eco-Awareness campaigning if it was easy.

The most important bit of non-obvious information: Biofuel can replace oil! But only if you ban oil worldwide from the global HQ (which you have to build beforehand.)

Even if you happen to disbelieve in global warming and feel environmentalism is nonsense, I'd say it's still a good turn-based strategy game. There's a lot of depth to it. And also a scenario where you get to be a villain.