Rebel Inc: Escalation

Good game.

What keeps me coming back to the NDemic Creations games? They found the bell that rings eternal of human purpose, and play it with the taut bow of game theory and truly elegant game design. NDemic psychologically digests the horrors of our real world with the pure-hearted thematic avatar of service to others. While not quite crossing it, they flirt with the border of "serious gaming." I logged in countless hours on Plague Inc, which proved all too prescient of real life. I'm not sure I'll ever play it again after my own pandemic fatigue. If you're nausea has lifted quicker than mine and you haven't played it yet, you absolutely should. (In Plague Inc your perspective is inverted, taking on the role of an aspiring world-killing bug. But the mechanics and lessons are clear, as you can't help but root for the world to rebuff you as you gain intimate understanding of what disease control is up against.) But call me a brute, I'll never stop returning to Rebel Inc. For as long as the US needs to grieve the (so-called) "neocon" dream of nation-building without Marshall Plan funding or popular support, Rebel Inc is the compassionate instructor of what goes right and wrong in asymmetrical warfare on foreign ground, and how much easier its for that to go bad rather than good. Yet this is not a cynically framed game, like my beloved Tropico. Rebel Inc may very well transform zeal and best intentions into sad wisdom, but it's respectful to its students' sincerity as well as the subject matter and the lives affected by it. It is also honest that success can be tantalizingly close with but a few Divine Interventions of luck. We're still in Woolsey's "WW4," and though the drama of this game may seem tied to the conflicts of decades past--don't mistake lingering relevance for nostalgia. The simplicity of this interface helps it become a powerful civics education tool. It succeeds as a game for how you'll keep coming back to try again and again. Play this game and tell me I'm exaggerating. It doesn't take long for the weight of responsibility to sink into your nervous system as you fumble yourself an admin team to run an interim government in a shell shocked corner of the world. Race the clock trying to get things off to a good start before rebels fill the vacuum. But you can't race too fast; containing inflation and corruption will keep you desperately mall-walking. Opportunity costs for those first precious moves are enormous, and the correct priorities will depend entirely on whom you staffed to help you, which map you picked, and where on earth you put your HQ. (IF you were the one placing your HQ.) Do you race to get relief aid out, or law enforcement? Or maybe governmental overhead and PR need to reassure the population of meager progress more than the progress itself! One thing is for sure, corruption within the new government you're forming will undermine you slowly-then-suddenly. The rebels don't have to beat you. They just have to stall you and make you look like a flat-footed lost cause. By the end of a 20 minute game, your heart will be pounding a little harder because you know what a thankless hell nation-building is. Heart and idealism won't be enough. Ruthless resolve against the enemy won't be enough. Neither Machiavelli nor Gandhi will be enough. So often not even a full money bin is enough, because the nascent economy you're engineering couldn't transform it to public good fast enough if it tried. The reviews here complaining there's no variety or replayability are intellectually stunted, blaming the game for their own lack of reasoning and imagination. Switch out an adviser for another, and you'll have Huge swings in strategic necessities to rebalance. An approach and policy sequence that sails you through one map will hit a painful brick wall in another. Think you're all that and have this game outsmarted? Go to Armchair Architect for random HQ placement for an overdue serving of humility. Win 5 of those in a row on the same map and then come back to brag and sneer if you can. Then go back and try it without any advisors at all. Go Mega-Brutal and put your HQ in a rural square far from the population centers. If you want to be challenged, you will be challenged. Some of the options are little corny, 'Tank Commander' is a borderline-comical exploration of a stratagem that outlived its usefulness. By all means, if there's an historical president of an 'Ex-Smuggler' running an international coalition of imposed government, please let me know. The game add-ons get more narratively oriented and 'Hollywood' as you go. Not my personal cup of tea, but by no means obligatory to the enjoy the basic game. It doesn't surprise me one iota that the devs still work on this game even after all these years. They're the real deal. Of course they're as captivated by the spirit of their games as I am. They'd have to be. In an age where the truth is the first casualty of cultural warfare on the domestic front, I doubt they know how valuable and important they are. It's hard to overstate my admiration of these guys. This game is priced to move. Don't think twice. Buy it.