Secret Government: Early version preview
The genre of historical global strategies has long been firmly occupied by projects Paradox Interactive. The choice is worthy: from Antiquity to the middle of the last century, from purely military strategies to games where the personal qualities of the characters come first. Thanks to a Swedish company, those who like to change the course of history can find something to their liking, not limited to one era.
Compete with Paradox difficult – this is probably why such video games are practically impossible to find now. Of course, there are exceptions: a recent example is a strategy released in early access Secret Government from domestic developers from GameTrek And 1C Entertainment. The title is intriguing – the theme of a secret government that controls the destinies of the world will be relevant, perhaps, at all times, and roleplaying the head of such an organization is perfectly suited to the chosen genre.
Confirmed
The first thing you remember when you launch Secret Government, – these are all the same global strategies from Paradox Interactive. On the main screen there is again a map of Europe with small figures of characters and armies, and on top there is a strip displaying resources. In the same way, there are many terrain display modes, including a political map, a religious map and the most common terrain map, separate windows for character development and factions – a complete feeling that we are looking at a clone Europa Universalis.
The similarities are not limited to appearance and interface alone. As we know, in almost all strategies Paradox the player does not control a specific character (with the exception of the series Crusader Kings), but takes the reins of government of an entire country into his own hands, personifying the fullness of power – the result is a kind of gray eminence who does not have a clearly defined personality in the game world.
The main idea of the authors Secret Government – go even further. We run the Brotherhood – a secret organization that is not strictly tied to a specific country, nation or religion. If you look at the map from the point of view of the relationships between the countries located on it, the player seems to be in the position of an ordinary observer. But this impression is deceptive – we have the power to decide the destinies of the whole world, and not of an individual country.
This will have to be done with the help of cunning intrigues, sabotage, bribery, persuasion and dozens of other actions, among which there will be no platitudes like “Declare war on your neighbor”. No, such radical actions can only be pushed and directed, but direct orders cannot be given – members of the Brotherhood cannot afford such a luxury. It was not possible, however, without a specific enemy – it was the enemy Brotherhood, which plays its own game and does not hesitate to put a spoke in our wheels on occasion.
Before us is the strategy of indirect control in its highest manifestation – the concept of Secret Government very interesting, but, as often happens, the original idea is broken by the complexity of implementation.
How to rule the world without attracting the attention of orderlies
The Brotherhood, as befits any self-respecting secret https://casinorialto.co.uk/ organization, has a clear hierarchy: at the bottom are the neophytes, just above is the backbone of the secret society – the servants, and the leadership is carried out by the titled Brothers, represented by the six most experienced and skilled members of the organization.
Each Brother, despite all the aura of mystery, is still a person, with his own characteristics, including citizenship (it will be easier for him to act in his home country), loyalty (affects whether he will renounce the ideas of the organization in some cases) and, finally, health (Brothers are mortal, so it is always worth keeping a replacement on hand). In addition, the characters have such important characteristics as experience and conspiracy.
Brothers from a rival organization do not pose any particular danger, and besides, they are quite easy to convert to your side.
If everything is clear with the first one, then it’s worth talking about conspiracy separately. The successful completion of tasks depends on it, the process of completing which gradually reduces secrecy. The smaller it is, the higher the chance that our agent will be exposed and sent to prison. You shouldn’t keep chopping up tasks for the same Brothers over and over again – it’s better to give them a rest and restore such a valuable resource.
Externally, managing your subordinates looks quite simple – we have figures on the map that can be dragged from one country to another, and the choice of occupation for a specific character is carried out using the radial menu.
This, in fact, is almost the entire gameplay – using the actions of each individual Brother to try to change the situation on the map as a whole. It’s simple: choose the desired task, read the requirements and consequences, wait the required number of days – get the desired effect upon successful completion or prepare to deal with the consequences of failure.
The number of possible actions is impressive: there are several dozen of them, and each can have far-reaching consequences. There are tasks related to the Brotherhood (recruit a neophyte or found a Lodge) or aimed at foreign/domestic policy: change the balance of parties in the government, organize a palace coup or revolution, extract some money from the treasury for the Brotherhood – this is not a list of all options, but only some examples of how you can govern the state using indirect control.
The possibilities are really quite interesting. I would like to organize a war of conquest in order to strengthen the position of a particular country or even capture all the enemy’s lands? We send a couple of brothers to the territory of the future victim, infiltrate the authorities and begin to engage in a variety of sabotage – from banal theft to inciting riots. And in the aggressor country, on the contrary, we train the army, help military leaders develop an offensive plan and increase militaristic sentiments in society. All that remains is a mere trifle: an incident on the border or a diplomatic insult (which, of course, happened not without our participation), and here it is, a war that will definitely end in victory – and before you have time to notice.
Unfortunately, this invisibility is not at all a consequence of the speed of action, but a legacy of the game’s biggest problem – the terrible interface.
stumbling block
It feels like interface artists Secret Government work separately from game designers. Outwardly, everything is quite nice – you can feel the style of Europe, and the very secrecy of secret societies like Masonic lodges, but using all this is inconvenient both purely mechanically and from a gameplay point of view.
Small icons, identical portraits of characters, a faded map, buttons that seem to be specially located at the maximum distance from each other, uninformative hints – in such contrast you begin to respect the designers even more Paradox, whose strategies are also often criticized for their overloaded interface. And if such technical mistakes can still be tolerated (and in the future – wait for them to be corrected), then deeper problems of the interface, already of a logical level, can cross out all the desire to play.
Take the same war: you can find out that it began only by chance, by hearing the noise of battles – the repeated ringing of sabers. As long as you notice the notification icon at the top, as long as you hover your cursor over it to see who is at war with whom, the war may already be over. Yes, there are army figures on the map, but they appear and disappear chaotically and do not carry any useful information. Literally a few days pass, and now peace has already been concluded, and the borders of the two countries have changed in one favor or another. Complete conquest completely turns into another bug – the defeated state disappears from the list, but remains on the map.
It’s no easier with domestic politics: its elaboration inspires respect and horror at the same time. Every country has political parties, classes, an extensive economic system focused on the production and trade of resources, legislation… But how inconvenient it is to manage all this! Why is there management, ordinary study and observation of changes – a real test. Long journeys through different windows and menus, during which the necessary numbers and data fly out of your head, constant return to the map to the Brothers figures to give orders – what kind of convenience can we talk about here?? Yes, perhaps it’s more atmospheric and realistic, but it is precisely because of this approach that the game has huge problems with the visibility of processes – and this is the main aspect of gameplay in the genre of indirect control strategies.
All attempts to get at least some pleasure from the game are undermined by terrible optimization and a huge number of errors and some childish flaws, such as the inability to load a custom save (only the current game with a single “save” is always active). The map does not freeze every few seconds only in pause mode, and snippets of code and variable names instead of their values are commonplace.
Developers from GameTrek you need to perform a real feat to bring your creation into a playable form. It will be very disappointing if they don’t succeed, is the concept Secret Government interesting, and the ideas underlying the gameplay can give many exciting hours to every lover of historical strategies. Reworking the interface and overcoming bugs in time for the stated deadline (the release is scheduled for this year) is a difficult task, but doable. Let’s wish them good luck – the more competitors grand strategies have Paradox, the better for everyone.
