Half-Earth Socialism

It is a very fun game, with well-made underlying mechanics and an overall great message, ruined by the dev's [or book that it's based on?] underlying biases. The TL;DR is that there is basically only one path to "win" the game. The only way to fully solve the meat crisis is to go vegan [reformism in the industry or tech-focused alternatives like lab-grown meat can't fix it], the only way to fully solve the energy crisis is...well actually, I still haven't figured that one out! Even going by the paths that are suggested/alluded to by the book and the dev's beliefs, its still kinda a coin toss to get the most optimal ending. There's like ~10 different factions, but most of them are only there to hinder you. Siding with, and going fully into, the majority of them leads you to either the "loss" state [being kicked out of office], or one of the many "middling" states [usually some kind of "you die wondering what else you could have done"]. For a long time I thought the game just had a pessimistic bent, until I looked into it and found out there *is* a good ending where you retire, but again, you have to go a very specific path/ideology in order to achieve it. Want to try and establish…

Socialism does not work.

Would be a really fun little game if it didn't constantly crash

This game is so disappointing. I was hoping for a Fate of the World-esque game but its really just "global warming is impossible to solve" because this game is so unbelievably difficult. If you try to do anything then *everyone* will be upset at you for either not doing it fast enough or doing it too fast, and the game never gives you enough information to see what exactly you did wrong, you've just failed by some metric that happened in the 5 year period between turns. Also the controls are ducking diabolical. Why do I have to drag these cards up or down like this? I'd say I want my time back but the game doesn't seem to believe in recycling so I'd just get garbage.

Game will glitch in mid to late stage run for production processes where suddenly, some process now makes 0 of something. Like for example, I could be using solar generation and/or wind generation for electricity, and then it immediately drops to 0. Or with agricultural output, the smallholder farms go to 0. Or with green hydrogen, it suddenly goes to 0. There's no in game explanation provided, and I have to shift generation from multiple lines to another method of generation, and I can't do it all at once, so it affects gameplay negatively when the world starts dealing with energy shortages. If the explanation is something like "there wasn't enough material to create this amount of output", then use the resource cap function that's already implemented in the production selections of the game.

I don't remember getting this game and I don't like it either.