Casterbridge

If you stop to think about it, very few politicians retain the support of the public when their terms come to an end. With so many decisions to be made, it is not surprising that there is no way to please everyone, so getting re-elected is very difficult indeed.

Casterbridge is an interesting game that has you playing the role of a small-town mayor trying to keep things running smoothly. Your ultimate goal is to get re-elected, and this depends entirely on the decisions you make.

The gameplay is very simple, as you mostly only have to decide how local ordinances and executive orders should be handled. You can enact them directly, but you also have the option of vetoing ordinances and contesting executive orders in court.

Naturally, your citizens will not be pleased with some of your decisions, and you will often be forced to enact executive orders even if you attempt to contest them. You have limited funds to work with, so be careful not to spend money needlessly.

Sadly, there is not much to do while you wait for new decisions to come up. The 3D representation of the town is interactive, and you can click the cars to learn more about citizens’ voting preferences, but this gets old very quickly.

Also, there aren’t a lot of decisions included in this version of Casterbridge, as we noticed that quite a few of them were repeated when, inevitably, we had to restart a game after failing to be re-elected.

Right now, Casterbridge is more of a prototype than a finished game, but it looks pretty interesting so far. It certainly shows how difficult it is to please your citizens as you figure out the best way to manage your funds and handle executive orders, although the effects of your decisions seem a bit exaggerated.

Nevertheless, I would love to see what the developer can do to improve the game in the future. There are many cool politics-related gameplay mechanics that could be implemented, and maybe a few city building elements as well.