For the People, analysis: we are all corruptible

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For the People
For The People, Analysis: We Are All Corruptible

An alternative Soviet Union serves as the framework for a game whose aim is to show us how any idealist, subjected to the right circumstances, will end up succumbing to some form of corruption.

For the People

Perhaps as old as politics itself is the corruption inherent in the use (and abuse of power). A subject discussed many times, that of the good innocent man who, placed in the right place and time, ends up succumbing to the inevitable temptations. That is the common thread of this For The People.

Arisen from the minds of young Russians and published by 101xp, this title immerses us in a fictionalized but highly recognizable version of the Soviet Union in its mature stage. Converted into the Union of Popular Orange Republics, is presented to us as a highly hierarchical and deeply corrupt, where a small part does and undoes regardless of the hardships of the common people to which they are supposedly due under the distracted gaze of a party more concerned with maintaining control.

In our role as a brilliant young man, chosen on our academic merits to lead a medium-sized city, we will have to deal with the clique of local chieftains, the party and the own needs of our population while we manage the resources of the city, a group of police officers and solve a strange murder in our spare time.

For the People

Moonlighting mayor

Indeed, we are talking about various playable formulas different that we must attend at different times of each working day as mayor, each developed in its own way. The main one is deal with complaints that we receive in the form of letters from our fellow citizens. Solve your problems us it will cost money, but at the same time ignoring them will cause from small accidents to big disasters, eroding our popularity in the process in the eyes of our fellow citizens, the party, or both.

For the People

But apart from reading the citizen requests, we will also have to deal with problems that the party transmits to us. For them we will have a series of faithful officials, converted into a kind of parapolice body at our command, to whom we must instruct how to proceed. Failure in these missions will make us lose confidence from our superiors, which could jeopardize our position at the helm of Iron 1.

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To all this is added our daily obligation to decide the factory production local, and at the same time decide for what objects (food, medicine …) that our city lacks we will exchange that production. Increasing daily production will cause stress for the neighbors and our loss of popularity.

For the People

But unfortunately, coinciding with our arrival at the mayor’s office we will have to deal with a pandemic and famines among our neighbors, which will force us to allocate those extra resources if we do not want our citizens to suffer and rebel against us. In addition, we must fulfill party requests, which will force us to decide whether to temporarily increase the rate of production, at the cost of infuriating the workers.

For the People

This resource management part is a somewhat add-on useless and little funThe only challenge being to remember every day to over-acquire the resource that citizens demand from us at that time, and becoming simply tedious in the medium term.

Finally, once our working day is over, our life as a detective, knowing different suspects and checking clues to be able to make a later accusation. Some sequences that will allow us to know a little more about Iron 1, our city, and the kind of people who live in it.

For the People

Immoral reality

But the reality is that all the gameplay is an excuse for the narrative, which is focused on showing us and make us participants in corruption politics. From the moment we set foot in our office, we have the opportunity to let ourselves be carried away by the different powers that be at play, and no matter how decent we want to be, that tide will drag us into less than decent actions whether we like it or not. This is a game about corruption and we will not be able to escape from it, although we can participate in varying degrees according to our decisions.

For the People

Of course, the game will not be long. The way the game is designed reduces our term in office to just a couple of weeks, which makes the management element somewhat useless, and at the same time leaves a plot that is quite to the point.

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This short duration is due in part to the bumpy development of the title itself, as explained by the developers on their Steam page. Born from an idea of ​​friends and originally developed by collaborators in their free time, with the goal of having the game in six months, the company turned out too ambitious and that first attempt at development ended up with people abandoning the project. Only thanks to the entry of new investors and the professionalization of its development, it was finally able to come to fruition after several years of development. This past helps to understand the feeling that For the People transmits, that of a project whose ambition far exceeds what it actually achieves.

For the People

Technically, the game shows a compliant aesthetic, but without showing off. Music does its job with the aim of immersing us in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, its rugged development takes its toll on the graphic section, which shows irregularities in the finishes and even a touch a bit shabby, like using the face of Emma Watson passed through a filter for one of the characters. Regarding the language, the game only comes in Russian, Chinese, English and German, so being completely based on reading, a good level of one of these languages ​​is recommended to enjoy it.

CONCLUSION

For the People fulfills its mission of immersing us for a while in the climate of moral decadence of the late decades of the Soviet Union, as well as a plea for the ease with which any ideology gives way to the creation of corrupt and exploitative elites. . Unfortunately, he does so with an ambition that exceeds his possibilities; staying in a product that could have given much more of itself had it focused on its virtues instead of trying to encompass all the ideas of its developers.

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THE BEST

  • The way in which the creators have managed to reflect the mechanisms of corruption.
  • Iron 1’s experience is credible for your organization as a small industrial town.
  • The music helps to set the different sections correctly.

WORST

  • It is made quite short: the whole story takes place in about two weeks of play, and despite the various endings, the repetition of the same requests and events does not invite replayability.
  • The strategy part, as well as the criminal investigation, seem like globs that are not quite polished, feeling like an unnecessary addition to the game.
  • To be a game based on detecting suspicions in the messages we read, the absence of Spanish can be hard for those who do not control English well