This was a very unique take on the theme.  I feel like I was a little too close to the subject matter to wholly enjoy it, but as a game it's very fleshed out and mechanically feature rich.  The premise works really well!

A few critiques:

1. The menus don't pause when a dialog is raised.  While this is useful later, early on alot of these dialogs have alot of text to read, so an option to automatically pause or slow the timescale when a dialog is open would be useful.
2. The Upgrade menu closes every time one is chosen, but later in the game where you're trying to spend 1000s of skillpoints it can be a hindrance.  It would also be nice to be able to buy some of the skills in bulk.
3. The timescale can really tax the computer when turned up to the point it made the game unresponsive.  Perhaps using a form of stochastic approximation might help with optimization (ie. based on certain values, certain countries exhibit a certain amount of events within a time step, evaluate those events in bulk and then apply them)
4. In the screen where you can see each country's progression, it would be nice to be able to sort by name or progress.  It would also help to be able to click on a name to select the country and move the camera to center on it.
5. For countries within other countries, it's sometimes hard to select them without selecting the containing country (ie. San Marino inside Italy)

I didn't realize that the stream was dropping frames once the game started, so the VOD is mostly me talking through the game. The start of the VOD and the restart of the VOD are linked below, and will be available for 60 days

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2574269144?t=1h7m49s
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2574322878?t=0h0m10s

This is one of the most distinctive entries I’ve seen. The premise is brilliantly twisted and the atmosphere you’ve created is weirdly captivating from the start. I love how committed the game is to its tone. The language, the soundtrack, the visuals, even the UI layout all feel like they belong to the same slightly off kilter world.

The hand drawn icons and stark UI give it a strong visual identity and really sell the idea of some obscure software running in a shady backroom. I especially liked the global map integration and how every country has its own stats and quirks. The way you present progression through mechanics like politicians and scammers is full of dark humour and works well with the theme.

Seriously cool concept and an impressive amount of systems to pull together in a jam format. Would love to see this refined further. Great work.

One of the most unique games ive played! for a jam making the whole map interactable and the whole system itself is top notch. I also love the visuals and audio direction for this. I couldnt progress normally after a point because a bug infinitely started increasing my skill points (pretty on theme for this game ngl ) 

What a wild amount of features you've put in there. Even using geo data for the countries! I think there might be some balancing missing - e.g. limiting the amount of cpu, or using accumulated upgrades (e.g. for clicking). I did not even make it past day 1, since I've reduced speed to 0.1 and then pushed so many upgrades that going over 0.1 introduced heavy lags. Such a cool game, good job!

Realistic in a unique way, my favourite so far.

Very thematically cohesive (its all suitably creepy haha) and I loved the premise! I found it quite hard to figure out though so I wasn't very successful in my spread of misinformation :)

Unfortunately I can't play due to not being available on a Mac or browser :( I'll see if I can play on another machine I have lying around