Rogue State 1.3

Rogue State is a political simulation game in which every decision you make affects the outcome. You are the leader of a fictional middle-eastern nation and you must keep a balance between various factions (capitalists, fundamentalists, liberals, and patriots), neighboring nations, and international organizations, all this while your popular brother tries to overthrow you. If it sounds like walking on a rope to you, you're not far from the truth – the game is indeed quite challenging and it may take a couple of runs until you find a decently successful strategy.

The game is turn-based, and every round new random events are generated. For every event, you have to make a decision, and the decision that you make affects your relationships, your influence, and ultimately the future of your nation with you as its leader. Things can go downhill pretty quickly because of the intricate interconnecting gameplay mechanics. There are random events, but also policies, tax rates, infrastructure choices, foreign relationships, and many other aspects that matter and are up to you to tweak. This challenging and unpredictable nature of the game is also the thing that kept me playing it for many hours. Its visuals are not so impressive, being cartoon-like and rather unsophisticated, but they're decent nevertheless. Anyway, the game is mostly dialog-driven. The voice over are also nicely done, as the people you interact with have proper accents (the US ambassador has an American accent, your neighbors have middle-eastern ones, and so on). At times, the game is even amusing, thanks to funny dialog lines or absurd events and weird stories.

To sum it all up, regardless of whether you call Rogue State a dictator simulator, a plain turn-based state management game, or any other way, the game is really cool, both addictive and challenging.