14 DAY TRIAL // Fate of the World is one of the most intriguing video games that I have laid my hands on in the last few weeks.
It's not necessarily a very good game and could bore a lot of players, but it's an important one because it is very much linked to the world we live in as gamers and talks about the future of Earth and humanity, tackling such issues as global warming, population management, human development, technological breakthrough and the influence of politics on social and economic problems.
The mechanics of the game are straightforward: the gamer needs to recruit agents in various territories and each of them can carry out the implementation of one policy at one time, influencing the region and possibly the world.
There are both primary and bonus objectives to be achieved and the scenarios can be pretty punishing, with one wrong move often leading to a spiral of disasters that makes achieving them close to impossible.
Success depends on understanding the various links between the variables that the game simulates and on making sure that the various regions of the world are kept appeased while being gently nudged towards the green positions.
Once every five years, the player has a chance to alter his policies, get detailed news accounts about each region of the world and maybe even expand his operations in order to reach more objectives in the coming years.
One problem that the game seems to have is that the turns are set a bit too far apart, with each set of decisions being separated from the next by no less than five years.
It might have been a better idea to set the timer at different intervals for different types of policies, dropping the player in for each one that expires and keeping the game going when all the agent slots are occupied and active.
Here's a look at Fate of the World in action: