This has come a long way since the first version! The art is great! The new event chains are pretty funny too, and I like the inclusion of more simulation-y stuff. I can see a lot more opportunities down both of those paths!
My main complaint is the repetition of events - there might be a bug in your random selection, or you might just need to add more and further limit duplicates. At the moment, once you figure out the “optimal” choice for each event, the gameplay becomes kind of mindless outside of the rarer events. If the population distribution changed over time (randomly and/or as a result of your decisions), you’d actually have to re-evaluate what the optimal choices are.
Another pretty significant bug seems to be that when you lose a run, you lose your purchases, but they keep incurring their upkeep fee. There’s no way to sell them either! I also think it would make sense to be able to buy upgrades when you get re-elected.
I have a bunch of ideas for how you could improve the UI too:
- Compact, permanent display of the polls that doesn’t obscure the art
- View how many events are left until the next election; I think the format of month and year would look nice
- Use the same panel for choices and results, so you don’t have to click over and close the result popup
- Currently, you can click a choice for the next event without actually acknowledging the previous result - this would fix that too
- View your upkeep/income on the campaign screen
- View your money in-game (and upkeep/income)
- Open the campaign screen in-game (even if you can’t actually buy anything)
- View the price and upkeep of things you can’t afford
- View how much money you’ll gain from corporate backing
- View exactly how a choice affected your polling
- Or, if you don’t want polling to be exact, at least give a rough idea of which groups liked and disliked your decision, and apply some fuzz to the numbers in the polls view
I recommend checking out some similar games for inspiration. Despite the medieval themes, Reigns is the closest one that comes to mind, also Sovereign Tower and Sort the Court.
I’d take it as a good sign that I have so many suggestions - it means there’s a lot of potential. :D