PREEMINENCE: World on the Brink

Welcome to office.

Debt has passed 110% of GDP. Cut pensions? Pensioners will be marching before the bill is even voted. Raise income tax? The middle class will remember at the ballot box. Do nothing? The debt crisis will decide for you.

Pick one of more than 200 real countries, as it stands on 1 January 2026, and govern it day by day. The clock is running. Pause it to think, start it again when it's time to decide. On the 1st of every month the statistics office publishes its figures, and you find out what your decisions have done.

Run the economy

Set the central bank's rate, write the budget line by line, move each tax by its rate. Growth, inflation and unemployment answer months later, not the next day. Borrow for too long and the markets stop lending.

Build your government

Ten posts to fill. In every party, around fifteen political figures, each with a face, a speciality and an opinion of you. Offer a ministry: you see the chance they accept, and they can say no. A partner that got its share votes your bills more willingly. One you overlook gets harder to deal with. And a post left empty for too long costs you every month.

Meet them face to face

Open the calendar and set up a meeting. Choose your tone, ask for a party's support, apply pressure, promise a post. What you say changes what they think of you.

Your ministers have ideas of their own

Hand a ministry over to its minister, and they will come to cabinet asking for a bigger budget. Finance wants savings. You settle it, or you let Finance answer.

Your government can fall

An unhappy minister resigns. A partner leaves the coalition. Parliament prepares a no-confidence motion. You get a month's warning: that is the time you have left to hold them back. A scandal gives no warning.

Get your laws through parliament

Every reform goes before a parliament where each party votes by its convictions, not your wishes. Build a coalition, endure a divided government, dissolve parliament if you're feeling lucky. A rejected bill is a month lost, and your opponents know it.

The street won't wait

Pensioners, low-income households, the young, rural voters: each knows exactly what you are taking from them. Announce a cut, and those it hits take to the streets that same day. Let the anger build, and protests turn into riots.

So what do you do? Give in, and lose face. Meet the leaders, and buy time. Crack down, and pay for it in the polls. Or do nothing, and wait for them to get used to it.

Every promise is a debt

The campaign is on. Take the stage, face your rivals in debate, promise a VAT cut or higher pensions. Voters will believe you, for a while. Break a promise, and they will make you pay. On election night the results climb on screen, and the country decides.

A country that ages

Every 1 January your population is a year older. Retirees multiply, workers get scarcer, and the pension bill follows. Raise the retirement age, change how pensions are uprated, open or close the door to immigration: these laws take ten or twenty years to pay off, and the voters they hurt are here today.

One world, one economy

Your exports are someone else's imports: when your biggest customer falls into recession, your factories feel it at once. When your economy overheats, your neighbours buy less from you and sell you more. A pandemic, El Niño, an earthquake, a food price spike: crises travel with trade. When one hits your country, you have a month to respond: lock down, rebuild, send aid.

Meanwhile, two hundred other governments live their own lives. They reform, borrow, fall and default, and what happens to them reaches you through trade.

Go to war, if you can afford it

Raise an army and pay for it. Declare war, take territory, make your country bigger. But conquest is paid for at home: defence weighs on the budget, debt climbs, and when the conflict drags on, public opinion tires and the street joins in. Your neighbours have armies too.

Play together, on the same planet

Start a game and invite your friends. Each takes a country; the rest of the world runs itself. One clock for everyone, and anyone can pause to think. Your recession becomes their problem, their growth becomes your opportunity. Cooperate, compete, or just watch who defaults first.

No black box

In most games of this kind, numbers move and nobody knows why. Here, every equation of the model is public: its parameters, its sources, and what it simplifies. Inflation is climbing? You can find out why. Think the model is wrong? Prove it.

Features

• More than 200 real countries, with their economic data, population and institutions
  
• An economy that runs day by day: growth, inflation, unemployment, a central bank rate to set, debt crises and defaults
  
• Fifteen tax rates to set, and a budget to share out line by line
  
• Who pays, who receives: income tax brackets, social benefits set one by one, unemployment insurance, minimum pension, separate VAT rates for food, energy and medicines
  
• A government to build: ten posts, around fifteen political figures per party, each with an opinion of you
  
• Face-to-face meetings to persuade, apply pressure or promise a post
  
• Ministers who push for their ministry, and a cabinet meeting where you settle it
  
• Resignations, partners walking out, no-confidence motions, scandals
  
• A parliament that votes, coalitions, divided government, dissolution
  
• Election campaigns, debates, promises you will have to keep, and election night
  
• Social groups that judge, vote, protest, riot, and eventually get used to it
  
• An ageing population, with pension and long-term care laws whose effects take decades
  
• Migration between countries, immigration and asylum laws, and a migration map
  
• Long-term growth driven by investment, workforce and productivity
  
• Pandemics, natural disasters and food crises, and your responses
  
• A connected world economy: trade between countries, recessions and recoveries that spread
  
• An army to pay for, wars to fight and territory to conquer
  
• Multiplayer: each player runs a country in the same shared world
  
• Statistics published every month, and a tab to compare the whole world at a glance
  
• A relief map of the world, from countries down to regions and districts

Fictional parties, leaders and figures; real countries and real numbers.

Add PREEMINENCE to your wishlist and follow its development.