PEGBRJE: Democratic Socialism Simulator and Babysitter Bloodbath
Well this just got hyper topical, didn’t it.
Democratic Socialism Simulator, or DSS for short, is a political simulation game made by molleindustria, an indie studio with a portfolio of interesting games based on how society is created, shaped and altered. You are the newly elected President of the United States of A (geez they really do let anyone be president nowadays), and it is up to you to appease the masses while lowering the carbon footprint, empowering the people and keeping the budget afloat. All while listening to the constant opinions of the many groups vying for your attention and dealing with the fallout of previous decisions made with news headlines reporting hyperbolic changes to things that didn’t happen. One of them is even a fox that only reports in all caps, which is a nice touch.
Let’s get something out of the way, first: while called ‘Democratic Socialism Simulator’, the entire political governance of the USA is more or less malleable to your preferences. If you are feeling extremely militaristic, just keeping funding the military while taxing the middle class — I’m sure that never went poorly for anyone in human’s history. For the most part, however, DSS does a fairly accurate job at portraying a streamlined, bite sized government simulation. Groups will ask questions on a matter they’d like to see changed or altered, and the two decisions given have direct effects on the voter opinions. At first, the decisions and outcomes are fairly cut and dry — support one group or the other, do one thing or the other. Over time, these decisions compound into lasting effects on your government status, with groups attempting to out you as ‘radical left’ or ‘somehow republican’. The rich might abandon you, or the people might attempt a revolt after you became unable to support a program previously implemented. The UN might condemn you for committing war crimes, or human rights violations, or applaud your decisions while doing nothing.
All wrapped in a cutesy artstyle with anthropomorphic animals to represent the different groups of America. It’s quite amazing how DSS feels overtly simplistic in its decision making, yet incredibly subtle in just how complex these issues are. Decisions are made with statistics, making the deportation of illegal immigrants feel like just another issue to deal with, yet can have huge lasting ramifications on how the people view your presidency and how you view yourself. Everything is played with a coy and playful attitude to the point of almost being a parody of governance, yet it almost feels too real with how dismissive decision making can be. Especially when looking at current political climates. Which is a yikes, to put into the best of terms.
DSS is short, with runs barely lasting an hour. Yet within that hour, I built an 8 year term where I attempted to introduce UBI only to have the economy shift upwards, leaving me with the decision to either remove UBI to save the economy or shift the taxes and piss off half of the people. And then the fox came back and yelled that I was ruining the rich people and becoming a communist, and my secretary informed me that the rich had evaded taxes again. God Bless America, I guess.
For a different flavour of horror that’s more appropriate for the month of October, Babysitter Bloodbath.
Babysitter Bloodbath is a 3rd-person horror game by Puppet Combo, a solo indie that does mostly 80s VHS horror. You take control of Sarah who is babysitting a kid named Billy, and in typical 80s horror fashion decide to be irresponsible and invite a guy over to drink stolen booze. Once he arrives, however, is when the nightmare begins as an escaped convict may be lurking within the confines of the house. I’m going to oust myself as a coward in the horror game department once again. Even games that aren’t considered to be ‘good scary’ are terrifying to me. So lets go over what I’d assume are the good scary parts.
The game’s audio is fantastic. Phone rings echo throughout the house, the TV blasts on after complete silence, and noises just randomly appear even if they sound just like what a house should sound like in the middle of the night. The silence was easily the most unnerving part, as I knew that with a title like ‘Babysitter Bloodbath’ that this would be a horror game, but knowing what you are supposed to expect creates that tension — it becomes not a game of ‘what’ but ‘when’. It doesn’t help that the rest of the gameplay is the standard locate object puzzles, which I refused to look for out of fear.
I ended up quitting BB early and having to watch somebody else complete the game to fully grasp at it. I was scared, and I will 100% admit that. I also was not a fan of the original controls, and had to change them immediately as the camera work for ‘cinematic’ was just the old camera systems that we used to use on God of War, which caused more problems than created atmosphere. However, if you want a spooky game that reminds you of the 1980s hit Hallowe’en for the season, give Babysitter Bloodbath a try. I can’t anymore though, so good luck without me.
