I gave it a try and I enjoyed it and I think it’s a good concept, but I think that’s all it is: a proof of concept for the book. As a standalone game it’s pretty buggy. On both my playthroughs I had issues with farms producing no food and power plants producing no electricity. Not to mention my emissions went up over 200000 after getting it to 0 for some reason. But like I said, it’s still pretty fun even in it’s current state. It’s a really tough game, but I got the hang of it after a while. I think the key is to fully and immediately switch from fossil fuels to renewables and to fund a bunch of different projects all at once.

Politically speaking, it’s meh. The creators come across as libsocs, and I don’t think there’s a single mention of Marxism. As such there is no ML faction in the game, but it instead feels like it’s split across multiple factions. There are “accelerationists” who want to use the productive forces to their fullest and give everyone a high standard of living and bring humanity to the space age, the “Fanonists” who are anti-imperialists/anti-colonialists from the global south, and the “authoritarians” who seems like lib left caricatures of MLs (i.e they get mad if you demilitarize the world or abolish prisons).

Possibly unrelated, but these are the recommended books on the website selling the creators’ book (second from the left).