Fallen Earth: Fate Of The World Tipping Point

Edited to correct pricing details - thanks for pointing it out, folks!

It’s been a while since I’ve played Fate of the World, the game that tasks you with saving the world from mankind and itself in a terrifyingly realistic fashion. Quinns wrote a fine summation of it here, summed up by the phrase "You find out you're an idiot", which is precisely what I found out when playing as well. And for a while I played it far too much, so that every news report of a real life catastrophe I read would make me roll my eyes at the futility of all possible solutions. It might be time to go back and give it another go with the release of Fate of the World: Tipping Point, which adds new scenarios, cards, features and UI enhancements. It's available at a 20% discount at present and can be purchased either through Steam, GamersGate or direct from Red Redemption. Both Steam and GamersGate are currently offering large discounts to owners of the original. There's even a trailer!

There were pictures of happy people in that trailer. I have no idea what that's about. They definitely don't feature in the game when I'm playing it. The world's last panda staring into the middle distance in a melancholy fashion? I've seen him, but never the happy people.

I'm interested to see what the UI enhancements achieve. For all that it did well, the original game was sometimes undone by an interface that hid more information than it revealed. There's a lot of educational material hidden in the game but it wasn't always readily available at appropriate times. It would make a certain kind of sense to ensure the player never knew the full impact of an action until it was too late, but graphs and charts were available in abundance, although that didn't mean they helped a great deal. To me at least, they were more likely to inspire pure terror and a sense of hopelessness. The feedback I needed was available but I would have liked it delivered in a more digestible fashion. That's probably true for the leaders of major organisations the world over though.

I'll definitely be taking a fresh look. I never tried out the Migration DLC, which is included with Tipping Point or can be purchased standalone, and it seems like it could change the game massively, allowing huge refugee crises and the population management panics that follow. Time to break our broken world once more.