For an ominous-sounding title, Fate of the World (FotW) is more a game in patience and frustration than action. The game is meant to be more intellectual, a series of what-ifs, a simulation and model, more than the typical have-some-fun game. It’s okay if you have an interest in that kind of thing (and topic), but for me, I found myself slogging through the missions, effectively failing before retrying and spending more time on my choices.

FotW is a card-based game in that each round consists of choosing from a set of cards to play. There is a little bit of a random number game (RNG) in terms of deciding if a natural disaster (e.g., flood, drought, El Nino) occurs, a war breaks out, a country develops new technology, or some other event happens in between rounds, but otherwise a large part of what happens depends on the cards you choose to play. You are the leader of an organization that effectively has control over the world. You hire agents in particular regions and depending on how many agents you have, that is the number of cards you can play in that region (e.g., 2 agents in Russia = 2 cards to play for Russia).

The type of cards vary from energy management to political management. The initial set of cards is too many for the novice player. The first mission is less of a tutorial and more of throwing you into the pool to see if you can swim. Yes, I read. Some of the news bulletins, which report back to you the effects of the cards you played and any RNG events you should respond to, are clear what needs to be done. For example, a flood occurs so playing a flood management card makes sense. Others are not so clear like the low standard of living which is complex of itself, but if you are not particularly learned in this sort of thing, should you play a card that will educate the population or a card that will help the health of your people? I am still a bit unclear on which is the better choice, but perhaps that is something best left to the theorycrafters.

I didn’t get very far, managing to successfully complete the first mission on my second try and then got half way through my second try on the second mission before losing interest. I just don’t have the patience for a simulation-type game, or perhaps the topic just doesn’t interest me. The general concept is to take a hypothesis (e.g., oil solves everything) and see if you can “play your cards” just right to reach the end condition. However, there are a lot of intricacies that is not immediately clear or is hidden away in the game’s many UI menus.

In the two missions I’ve played, I was expected to reach a certain year without self-destructing the whole world, essentially. Simple enough, right? Well, I reach the target year, but then I find out I was also supposed to raise the standard of living or some weird index value that I have to go through a series of menus just to find. It’s a little frustrating, to say the least. So, I play through again, vaguely getting an idea of which cards unlock what set of cards that can then be used to raise this mysterious value.

Not that I check or keep track each time. What I ended up doing was reading through the news bulletins and responding. If I had the money and extra card slots, I would put in a card that would encourage education or medical welfare or some such thing. More often than not, I was responding to events rather than being proactive. The first round is essentially wasted in unlocking sets of cards for later use, so you can’t exactly be proactive off the bat.

This game is more of a niche game and perhaps would be good for the Models, Simulations, and Games class I took almost 2 years ago. The concept reminds me of the early war games that were used for military strategy and history buffs who enjoy reenacting battles and proposing hypotheses to see how the outcome would change. This game, instead of being something reflective on the past, is reflective on the future and based on the information we have now. Choices made in the game may not necessarily correspond to the actual future, but the idea of it’s potential effects is an interesting one.

My other annoyance was the background music loop. I noticed the music, it stood out, and it doesn’t loop very well. I knew I was taking a long time when the music would stop playing.. but otherwise, the visual menus and graphics are not bad. The design of the UI is another matter with so much information to keep track of and being hidden away in various menus did not help much.

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t really recommend this game if you are looking for something light. It’s definitely a game you’d need to sit down and think about. Environmentalists may find it interesting in the same way history buffs find war games interesting (if tedious to set up).