I'm not sure some of the options are working correctly. Several times I was asked to donate money, refused and still the money was taken. The artwork really is good though, and I can see the direction you were taking this game. I'd be interested to see what you could turn this into given more time.

Hey, I can see that if all those problems hadn't happened, your game would be very insteresting!
If you have more time and want to continue, I encourage you to do so. The ideas are there, and they only need to be implemented.
Anyway, as it is now I didn't really understand what I could do. I printed as much money as I wanted and nothing happened (or I didn't noticed it).
The graphics are very good and coherent. The music is soooo relaxing I could listen it on repeat for hours.
Great idea and graphics. Congratulations!

I like the idea of showing inflation - but to me it just seems like it's impossible to win and everything goes shit. I like progress in my game :') Perhaps I just didn't spend enough time with the game.

Cool visuals and nice music, well done!

Yeah the idead of inflation is very connected to the theme. As the first game, it's pretty cool. Good luck with next games!

tried to be dictator. it's hard ^(

I like this kind of management games so I had to try yours. Actually, I didn't understand all of the possible things to do, but I'm quite impressed by the depth behind the game : special events, places, people, election promises ... Great work. And I am curious about what you are going with this game, but it's a good start. And the music is really nice too !

Awesome! I hope you continue working, I want to play more!

Awsome stuff would love to see what you would of done with the other fetures fun game though

Ambitious, and a great take on the theme. Would love to see this with the other features working. Keep at it!

I really loved the music and the graphics, and the general setting, the name and the "shishkys" for money, that was great! I feel that if you had more time, the features that where missing, would make it more challenging and interesting, however it is impressive with the time limit all the content you made, do finish your idea, nicely done

Game graphics look great but was really overwhelmed by all the screens popping up when i clicked somewhere without knowing it was a button and got lost pretty quickly. Maybe make the clickable graphics more noticeable?

great work!

Very interesting interpretation of the theme ! The falling cash animation is a great feedback for the player. On the contrary, the bad effects of inflation are a little hard to notice although it is the core mechanic so it will be good to make them more concrete ! There is a lot of promising feature (choose our electoral promise, choose between inflation or debt) that could be really great if completely implemented !

I can see the potential in this but it's rather ambitious for a compo entry. Maybe taking an extra day and entering in the jam category would have served the game well?

Nice graphics and audio. Has potential for some very nice gameplay I feel, though Ludum Dare being what it is, there's some stuff missing ;) Still interesting!

Great idea! I haven't seen many political sims this jam, and I think the theme could spawn a few.

I got hints of Democracy, Reigns or Papers, Please, which is a great thing, and there is potential on the entry. However, there were some issues with the UI and at some points I didn't get a clear feedback of what was going on. Admittedly, systems-based games tend to be too heavy to properly develop and balance on 48h.

For your first game this was quite a feat. Congratulations, hope you enjoyed making it!

Maybe too ambitious in 48 hours? I've already had trouble finishing my political game in 72 hours :p
Joking aside, it's great work! I'm curious to test your game with all the features you wanted to implement to see ;)

A lot of the other comments have mentioned an inflation mechanic, but I was able to beat the game easily without noticing one. I was able to print as much money as I needed, then invest that into making people like me and industry productive. The only problem with that approach was that my hand started to cramp from the clicking, but that felt like a UX issue more than a mechanical obstacle. I understand I missed some core aspect of the game, so I don't feel right criticizing it fully, but from what I've seen of it I think it's too easy to make all aspects of your country happy. No threat really appeared for the duration of the 4 years.

@amras0000 I was having a lot of trouble playing and trying to avoid inflation, but with your strategy I got through the game easy. One thing I did notice was that the percentage meters at the top were lower than the average percentages near the end, so I suspect that the inflation mechanic might just be a reduction in those percentages.

This game is real pretty, and the music is solid too. The idea here is excellent too, though the implementation was clearly limited by the length of the compo. As other people have mentioned, several of the choices seem to have their consequences flipped, and there is little indication what the various meters mean early on.

As I mentioned above, the interaction with the inflation mechanic is a little weird too. Trying to avoid inflation altogether dooms your country, while printing enough money to bring inflation up takes more clicking than the average player can handle too. While I appreciate that you're forcing the players to engage with the core mechanic of your game, this seems to clash with how players would expect the game to run, and probably needs more tweaking before it can shine.

Overall, this is a fine, if somewhat overambitious game, and you did a good job putting it together in the length of the compo. Congratulations on your first Ludum Dare!

Good work! A solid use of the theme. I think a lot of trial and errors should be made to figure out the strategy, in a fun way. The game is rather completed among the compo ones. Well done!

I know that feel bro, I as well tried to make kinda big game and lost first day on traps wich 80% of people didn't see at all and huge levels that in the end remained empty. Overall i feel some love and hard work invested in this game and its very impressive. Personally I think you could improve this concept in like 3-4 weeks of productive work and made a nice casual mobile game with some deep progression system and maybe a scoreboard to maintain attention. Overall nice game, especialy made in such short time. Good job and congratulations with your first LD.

Its a really cool and unique idea! Hoped you had more time to complete it but still in this state its fun :D 10/10 would "kick the dead horse" again xD

Ok, 50 ratings received, time to close this up. Thank you everyone who played my game and reviewed it! I started up typing you personal gratitudes, but then I felt silly, and I'll just say again:
**Thank you for your feedback and your time with my game!**

@mruniverse Oh yes, the options most certainly don't match the outcome sometimes. I implemented them too late, and in a horrible way - as three separate string arrays and a bunch of switch clauses - no wonder they are a complete mess.

@thiagofr The most important part of the game, the inflation rate, haven't found its way to the final build. It's still there, but isn't visible to the player. Whenever you print money, your next turn is going to be worse than usual. However, with the poor balance of the final version, you could print more than enough to cover any negative consequences for your actions.

@oliverlevay There's actual goal in the game - finish your presidential term of four years. I forgot to add it to the description, and updated it after your comment, so thank you for that. I also do like the games to have progress, that is.

@arputikos Yeah, apart from my game, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't seen any games about inflation out there on this LD. The theme is like natural for it. And since I played like 60/2800 games, I still believe there are some.

@drfallos The current balance sucks, that's for sure, but I intended it be full of uncanny decisions - like, you won't last long as a pure evil dictator, but once in a while you'll have to kick someone in their nuts to get everything working.

@goloso-games Oh yes, the problem of being overambitious. The electoral campaign was also meant to give you some starting perks, both positive and negative; the countries were supposed to have an impact on the game, and there were also major events each year - all of them, of course, cancelled because I decided that drawing five separate maps is, for some reason, more important than the gameplay.

@mrphil @thomas-higgins @spacewarp Thank you! I hope to finish it in a month or so.

@muromets That's "shish", not a "shishka". Still the same kind of pun, though. Thank you for your kind words!

@blinkeye Yes, that was totally going to happen - a UI with outlines and more comprehensible windows - but was left out due to the deadline.

@edmond00 The capital was supposed to help with that, by showing you some of the math behind the scenes - inflation rates and such - but I wasn't able to complete that in time. That's why the capital is clickable, but unusable.

@antti-tiihonen Nah, doing a solo take for Jam on my first LD would be way too much. This experience was great for me.

@ithildin Never actually played Democracy, and, yes, Papers Please were a huge inspiration here.

@tinis-games Even if so, had I a chance, I'd do completely the same. I think I wasted too much time on the graphics (especially those that aren't really needed, like a separate map for each province) and the music (my first time with the FL Studio), so I think that if it wasn't for that, I would be able to finish it in 48 hours.

@amras0000 You know, I'm actually happy someone broke the game. At least you were able to beat it, and I hope you haven't developed a carpal tunnel syndrome, have you? Thank you for playing and leaving your feedback!

@rockhoppergames The core of the mechanic was supposed to be taking hard decisions about printing more money vs risking your ratings. Of course that wasn't supposed to be a clicking simulator, that's just me not being able to balance stuff in time. Thank you for your massive valuable feedback, I enjoyed reading it and I will sure use it to polish the game.

@pecolyte Thank you! That's great to know that someone sees my game this way!

@dumivid Again, you know, I wouldn't trade it for anything else. I really think that had I more experience I'd be able to finish it in time, and it was 100% worth of it.

@billeclipse Thank you so much! Great to know someone actually enjoyed playing the problem child of mine!

My biggest complaint is that I didn't really understand what was going on. When I selected the choices each month I didn't see a change in money and I had no idea how it was impacting the percentages. Aside from that though, I really love this concept and I definitely think that with more time you could flesh this game out into something really really amazing. Great work for a short time and I'd love to see more!

150K% inflation, 18generals down for corruptions, nationalists marched over the city almost 6 times. But the fact is i was a good president, cuz now, we have a good labor codex. x)
This game is a really good idea! Nice job to made in the time of LD. Capitalism just perfectly fits the theme, but i didn't really had ideas about how to make a game about that in just 2-3 days. You did, well done !

Nice entry!, interesting to see a simulation game on Ludum Dare.

Thanks for this entry, though I'm not sure if should be even able to pay 2000 if I have only 276 in my pocket :D