Who knew climate change could be so much fun?

The year is 2020 and climate change has reached critical levels. The global temperature is rising, the Maldives are being evacuated, and countries have realised that their individual efforts are no longer enough. 2018 brought what scientists called the world’s first ever “hypercane”, and the serious possibility of dangerously high temperatures by 2100, along with growing economic uncertainty, is leading to growing civil unrest.

Something must be done, and so the Global Environment Organisation (GEO) is formed – an independent, but slightly controversial organisation with the goal of countering the increasing effects of climate change. And with them they bring a newly elected President – you. Your first order of business is to decide how you would like to be addressed (ranging from Darling and Dude, to Learned One and Your Excellency), then it’s straight into saving the world.

The way you go about it is to hire representatives in major regions around the world (Europe, Russia, Middle East etc.) to carry out your bidding. Once hired, you can play one ‘card’ per representative from a set currently available in that region. Each of these cards represents a project that the representative will carry out over the next five years, leading to long-term positive and/or negative effects in that region, such as a change in GDP or carbon emissions, or even global mega-death.

It does all sound a bit like a dictatorship, and to that end the GEO and its representatives can be kicked out and banned from a region if its population doesn’t think you’re acting in their best interests. This is one of the ways Fate of the World manages win and loss conditions – lose control of too many regions and you fail the level. Most win conditions must be achieved by a specific year (and there are bonus ones for extra points), and your funds are generally very limited, so there’s real pressure to play the right cards in the right places.

The system is conceptually rather simple – play cards and click next – but developer Red Redemption have added a great deal of complexity really quite well. In addition to the sleuth of statistics available for each individual region – and on a global scale – every ‘turn’ of five years you get major news stories from that region. These headlines provide you with even more insight into public opinion, and the general state of things, and it’s from here that you will probably be harvesting most of the information that you need to plan your next move.

It’s easy to see that this game requires a lot of thought. You are guided in with only two regions, and a large number of cards to play with, but you should enjoy the simplicity while it lasts. Once you’ve finished the first level, you get chucked in at the deep end – the whole world is yours to look after (or control, if you prefer, Your Excellency) with a tight budget and only a handful of cards in play.

It’s a steep learning curve, and with so many different strategy paths to try out, it’ll probably take a few attempts to get it right. But once you get going, it’s quite satisfying to see your plans unfolding before your eyes. The whole system makes sense – there is clear logic to the cards mechanism, requiring you to set up each region’s infrastructure first. From here, you can begin shaping that region’s future – be it an unpopular, highly-taxed one to get funds, or a flourishing technologically advanced one.

With all these decisions to make and implement, it’s important that the interface is helpful and unobtrusive, and Fate of the World does this well. It’s quite clean and navigating through the game is simple, with no more than a few clicks to get to any of your resources. There are little, finishing touches – like playing region-themed background music when you’re making decision in that area – that let you know the front-end has had attention too. There’s even a heat map of the entire Earth so you can keep track of which countries are contributing the most to global warming, but the emphasis here is definitely on the detailed underlying mechanics.

With so much of the premise relying on the core gameplay, it’s so important that it feels strong and offers a good experience, and Fate of the World certainly delivers on that front. Not only that, but it manages to deliver a game based on a really interesting concept – one that links well to our own, current conditions, and is possibly even trying to make a point about a future that our actions could take us.

I really would recommend FotW, even if this genre isn’t your usual tipple. Having to think about your various strategies and the solid gameplay makes this game one to look out for.

Fate Of The World is available now from www.fateoftheworld.net, for about £10.