Oh, the options are varied: Two old men who can hardly string a coherent sentence together in one corner, and a collection of ineffectual wazzocks chanting “Let’s stop the chaos” while promising to continue austerity and do very little in the way of improving the quality-of-life of voters. Of course, on the fringes of that second group you have the frog-faced ego maniac searching for any bit of limelight every election cycle, promising to allow his voters to kick minorities to death in a pub every Tuesday. I don’t blame anyone for being at least semi-apathetic given the last 10-16 years.

To an extent, I see the point of political simulation games such as Tropico 6, Suzerain, Crusader Kings (to an extent), and even Positech Games’ Democracy 4. Released into early access back in 2020, it has been almost four years since I wrote a preview of Cliff Harris’ spreadsheet-based political simulator. In that time we’ve had book banning in what is purported to be the pinnacle of Western democracy and the UK has a further two prime ministers (three by publishing!).

We’ve gone from tens of billionaires to hundreds, two wars are being heavily talked about because they involve White folks, again ignoring Africa, and just the other week there was an attempted coup in Bolivia. To say Democracy 4 is “out of date” might be pushing it, but in the world of politics – the slowest and fastest thing recorded in human history at the same time – it has been somewhat left behind in comparison with both broader and more nuanced takes cropping up over time. Its political simulation has gone from drowning depths to standing comfortably.

None of this is to say that Democracy 4 is bad. In fact, I’ve put in more hours over the last two weeks than I did for the preview. I still enjoy it, though its difficulty and nuance have been ground away, possibly as a result of my apathy and resulting desire to play more left-wing “extremes.” Implementing sweeping social programs, compulsory voting (which really should be the case), increasing taxes on the rich, redistributing wealth for a more equitable society, and winning multiple elections on the bounce as a result.

If you’ve even looked at or played a few moments of a Democracy game, you’ll know that it is 90% about moving sliders to keep other graphs happy, meanwhile balancing a budget. I would say it is so easy a child could do it, but we saw how massively Liz Truss spaffed that up a wall to the tune of £30bn in 24 hours, £60bn in her 49-day tenure. Of course, you are supposed to play the political game and keep everyone happy while the extremes of the proletariat plan to find a convenient grassy knoll. Chances are though, you don’t have to.

Play a Spitting Image-like caricature of a right-wing leader and your brains might be spread over the backseat and a pink pill-box hat. Play a Yes, Prime Minister pasquinade of a left-wing politician and you’ll get by reasonably, but might have to dance a little closer to the center in those early turns. However, if you play a more centrist figure, dare I say that Democracy 4 becomes a bit boring over time.

With the help of Steam Workshop mods, I’ve been able to play as an independent Scotland, as the EU (basically), and a couple of others not in the base release of Democracy 4. With a further extension to the policies on offer and possibly adding a little more depth than is currently available. In each save I’d run into the same events in the same order most of the time; the same political backlashes, the same presumptions of intent on a binary choice, and the same series of events resulting in religious plots to murder me. It hasn’t felt as malleable as I’d have hoped.

Some policies add depth, both since the early access launch and the resulting mods. As well as the obvious DLCs available, but I can’t speak for them. However, as much as they add to the pool of things to make people represented by a percentage on a graph angry at you, that’s all they are for the most part. What I’m getting at is that the complexity of each group doesn’t feel as strong and Democracy 4 has one of the issues Democracy 3 also seemed to have. The entire population makes the decision, all 333.3 million in the US.

Of course, the problem with that is this includes actual children, people under the age of the voter registration limit. I’m not saying it is there, but Count Binface’s 2019 manifesto suggestion of lowering the voter age to 16 and limiting the voter age to 80 isn’t on offer, sadly. Unsurprisingly you also can’t “Banish Katie Hopkins to the Phantom Zone either.” It would be nice to play as the Monster Raving Looney Party and introduce the 99P coin, and hell maybe even limit voting age to only those under 35.

That said, Democracy 4 isn’t about that, it isn’t about being political. To a degree Positech Games doesn’t make a comment about one political allegiance or the other – though given the partisan nature of the internet, I’m sure someone will argue otherwise simply to be a contrarian. You make political decisions, but at its best, that’s where depth is levied: Each of the millions of people are assigned boxes (youth, middle income, retired) and for the most part vote accordingly.

In my super-mega (or MAGA) capitalist-conservative run in the States, I still had state employees, young people, the poor, and many others I was actively harming voting for me. 160+ turns in, I’d eradicated term limits and extended the time between elections, banned drugs and abortion, ended public education, lowered the income and corporate tax rates, established the nation as a fundamentalist theocracy, built the border wall, banned homosexuality, and massively expanded the intelligence/security agencies to stop any assassination attempts. All of which was done to the tune of half the US’ multi-trillion dollar debt.

Meanwhile, with Scotland and the “European Federation” (EU), I’d implemented large-scale and sweeping socialist-liberal programs. Not only did I provide a massive Universal Basic Income program, well-supplied universal health care, childcare, state pension, social care, disability benefits, and many subsidies. Though this large-scale spending makes retired, Conservative, and unionist voters scared, I’ve also made both governments profitable, and even having billions in reserves instead of an ungodly debt. Again, without the constant threat of assassination, I also lacked an intelligence/security bureau to protect me.

With a little know-how, Democracy 4 becomes too easy, the political balancing game has been tipped in a red, white, purple, and whatever party color you’ve picked. With dark clouds covering the political landscape the world over, the difficulties of office should be greater, more encompassing, and stressful than playing armchair Jim Hacker. Of course, Democracy 4 was never going to have neverending depths or lengthy and highly intense graphical cutscenes, it is unrealistic to believe it in the first place.

I’ve bumped my gums endlessly here and before in a preview about complaints I have. The truth is, despite that lack of empathy towards some of Democracy 4’s weaker points, it is a continuation and slight expansion of what made everyone enjoy Democracy 3 from time to time. If anything that’s both my biggest issue and what makes me love the political simulation title for what it is. It hasn’t disastrously tried to reinvent the metaphorical wheel for the series’ established gameplay, but at the same time, it lacks the deftness of which to warrant the changing of governing game by the end of the development cycles.

A PC review copy of Democracy 4 was provided by Positech Games for this review.

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Democracy 4

$26.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Some greater depths in some portions of gameplay.
• The ability to talk politics without being overtly political.

Cons

• Possibly not a big and sweeping enough change to warrant another purchase/time.
• Sometimes there's not enough to mark replayability.