Despotism 3k

Despotism 3k has a solid strategy resource management core and some excellent, creative text dialogue events oozing with humour. It also has one of the most punishing and demotivating RNG event simulators that can break each of your runs without mercy and will happily kick your progress to the curb. It’s a decent game, but just like its real life despot counterparts, holding onto ultimate power will always be impossible to enjoy when a Cthulu monster decides it doesn’t appreciate your delusion of grandeur.

Despotism3K is full of humour that had me laughing a lot, but the high degree of difficulty and randomisation and arbitrary choices that can end a run in a moment had me swearing at it a lot, too. You end up replaying gameplay that doesn't change all that much between runs. Still, it's a good distraction if you don't want to play a huge adventure game, and instead want to throw some puny humans into a bioreactor.

In terms of overall look, bleak theme, and the humor in its many odd random events complete with pop culture references and other unexpected surprises Despotism 3k comes out of the gate feeling like it has promise...

I don’t know if I will ever complete this game. Gosh knows how long it’ll take me. All I do know is that no matter how hard this game might be, I am loving it! I don’t think I even care if I can finish the first 25 days, I just want to keep playing. There’s probably some kind of trick to it, but I haven’t found it yet. Heck yes, loved it, still love, will continue to love this gem. Challenge, laughter, sometimes disgust and a little bit of schadenfreude too, is wrapped into this package to make a game I can lose myself in, literally!