Nikhil Murthy's Syphilisation
Why Not Games · 2024 · Strategy, 4X, Indie, Historical, Political
PC
7 user reviews86% · 7
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About Nikhil Murthy's Syphilisation
Syphilisation is a postcolonial parody of the 4X genre. In it, I take the established tropes of 4X games and attempt to show postcolonial alternatives to each of them. Most notably, Syphilisation frames human struggle as a common striving for a better world rather than a furious competition between ourselves. There's a lot of space left uneXplored in the 4X space and Syphilisation aims to show some of what more is possible.
In Syphilisation, you play as a student doing a group report on Gandhi, Churchill and colonization as a whole. In doing so, you will research actual facts about the events of the time, including the Dandi March, Appeasement and the history of Ahimsa. You also learn about the students doing the report and their stories. Also, as anyone who has had to do a group report knows, the politics of nations are just the politics of student groups writ large.
This is a game where you can try empathy though. If you wish to play opportunistically, this game is not going to stop you, but will let you try an alternative if you prefer. More than one player can win and you're able to help others as much as you can hinder.
It's also a game that tries to show something of history from below. The citizens of your empire have many requests of their own and will often just handle them by themselves rather than wait for you to get around to them. They will research new technologies, complete buildings and units and simply deal with their issues by themselves. You can make yourself more popular by getting there first, but Syphilisation understands that leaders need the people and not the other way around.
Everything in this game, from campaigns to technology to settling all try to present a system that is not underpinned by imperialism and so present something novel in this 4X space. This is a game of ideas and I hope you like them.
In Syphilisation, you play as a student doing a group report on Gandhi, Churchill and colonization as a whole. In doing so, you will research actual facts about the events of the time, including the Dandi March, Appeasement and the history of Ahimsa. You also learn about the students doing the report and their stories. Also, as anyone who has had to do a group report knows, the politics of nations are just the politics of student groups writ large.
This is a game where you can try empathy though. If you wish to play opportunistically, this game is not going to stop you, but will let you try an alternative if you prefer. More than one player can win and you're able to help others as much as you can hinder.
It's also a game that tries to show something of history from below. The citizens of your empire have many requests of their own and will often just handle them by themselves rather than wait for you to get around to them. They will research new technologies, complete buildings and units and simply deal with their issues by themselves. You can make yourself more popular by getting there first, but Syphilisation understands that leaders need the people and not the other way around.
Everything in this game, from campaigns to technology to settling all try to present a system that is not underpinned by imperialism and so present something novel in this 4X space. This is a game of ideas and I hope you like them.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
✦ AI summary
Players praise this game as a thoughtful and effective critique of the 4X genre that challenges its colonial foundations through clever subversion and meta-design, with the framing as students researching history adding meaningful depth to the experience. However, there's a consistent complaint that the game's systems and mechanics are poorly explained and confusing to learn, making it difficult for players to understand how to actually play despite appreciating its ambitious concepts and good-hearted vision. The game is seen as important cultural commentary with excellent design intentions, b
The use and subversion of the 4X genre to challenge conventional ideas of what a strategy game should mean (and the underlying colonial heritage that comes with strategy games) is excellent. The systems and broad ideas take a bit of time to come together, but the overall goal and the research in making the game show throughout its runtime, making it a worthwhile experience. Keeping the spotlight on India's colonial history deepens the goal of the video game to reshape the idea of a 4X game.24 found this helpful
It's a neat idea, and it has a good heart. I am going to keep playing, trying to finish a game. However, I have absolutely no idea how it works and I am just clicking on things as they appear.8 found this helpful
This is a very detailed subversion of traditional expand/research/conquer gameplay to create a "postcolonial 4x game." It's also interestingly meta: it's a game about students PLAYING a game as they work on a research project about a particular historical moment, and research in the game can be progress in that research project. RPS has good coverage of it here: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/nikhil-murthys-syphilisation-is-a-ferociously-in-depth-empathic-reworking-of-civilization-and-other-4x-games4 found this helpful
This is an amazing piece of work. Videogame-as-critique. Like many i expect, I'm well aware of the many critiques of the inherent imperialism and colonialism that form the basic structures of any civ-like game (and yet enjoy playing them anyway). The framing as playing as "a student doing a report on Gandhi, Churchill and colonization" works. In fact, playing the game made me realising that some kind of framing like this is necessary to meaningfully critique the genre. Whilst I understood all the problems inherent with the ways civ-likes rely upon colonialist forms of understanding in the way they represent and structure the games around space, landscape, territory, peoples, science, progress, etc. What I hadn't quite fully realised, until playing this game, was that the very premise of playing "as" a civilization (or civ-leader) is the key decision, from which all of these colonialist epistemologies become necessary to create a civ-like. In short: If you like civ-likes, but want to be prompted to reflect upon the presumptions built into how they operate, this game does it more directly than any number of essays on the topic.2 found this helpful
This game is really cool! I'm still learning how to play but it has the feeling of starting something deep and complex and interesting.2 found this helpful
For various reasons I prefer to leave reviews on Backloggd these days (https://backloggd.com/u/Wojit/review/3246989/), but I wanted one here to draw more attention to this fun little game, and really cool and effective game design experiment. Though the implementation has some issues, It's so thoughtfully designed and completely realised as an alternative kind of game in a genre that is crying out for more novel, diverse, and politically aware games.1 found this helpful
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