For the People – Preview
Greetings comrade, how would you feel serving The Corvin Empire? Will you become the leader of the people, or make the Com-Union Working Party happy? Make the right decisions or you will be sent to the gulag. In For the People, you will finally get to feel how it is leading a Communist settlement and your decisions will weigh the fate of the inhabitants of Iron-1.
You play as Francis River, a 26-year old that has recently joined the CUWP. After being an active member of the Altstad’s department for the past three years, you get called in for a great job offer. Francis becomes the new leader of Iron-1 and it is one of the harshest places in The Corvin Empire. The once small mining town has become the center point of the industrial revolution. The people are unpleased by the previous leader and you must repair the broken bonds. You’ll have to do this while keeping your bosses pleased at the same time.
The game is shown in a retro-inspired hand-drawn style. There are some simple animations and other sections are presented in a comic-like progression. To emphasize on the blander past, there is only the usage of black, grey and orange. Now if the visuals don’t get you, the sound will. The music and sound effects play perfectly on your feelings. They underline certain situations and can make you feel very uncomfortable, such as meeting a powerful official that asks you to do some illicit business. The music feels like you are behind the iron curtain and the sound effects are nicely placed to make the gameplay fluent.
For the People is a point-and-click adventure game where your decisions will reflect on the future of the city. As your predecessor only cared for himself and not the people, you will have to fix the many broken bonds. You start the game by talking to some officials and they will inform you about the current situation and how the civilians think about their leader. Every day, you will have to reply to letters, accepting or ignoring requests from the inhabitants and leaders. Sometimes events will cost money, but will increase your leadership or the happiness of the people. Later in the game, you will also have to resolve cases that happen in Iron-1. From harassment to serial killers, work together with officials and use the right tools for the right job to successfully complete your mission. Upon failure, the CUWP will take over, but they won’t forget your mistakes.
The preview that we have played was rather short. Only being able to play for a few days in the life of Francis isn’t long enough to give a real impression. You do one case and reply to a few pleadings from the people, but won’t really notice that your actions hold consequences. It is a good start to learn a bit of the simple game mechanics and you can replay to select different options to the quests given but these won’t make a difference in this short demo.
Conclusions
For the People was only a short introduction to becoming a Soviet leader. It gave us the small taste of how it feels to be the glorious leader and it paves the road to a lengthy campaign. Your decisions will affect the future of Iron-1, yet the demo is too short to notice any consequences. The graphics and sound are absolutely stunning, the story has much to it and the gameplay is simple.
No Comments