You are a metaphorical civil servant in an authoritarian regime and your job is to hold up the metaphorical pillars of government: 

- Strength - Methaphorically represented by Chess
- Unity - Methaphorically represented by Card Flipping
- Order - Methaphorically represented by the Towers of Hanoi
- Oversight - Methaphorically represented by Checkers
(Note: We have far more on the way, we hope to expand the game outside LD50)

While your job may seem may seem futile, it is an important part of holding up our thrown. To do these you need to use your brain to confront a few puzzles to distract you from the the non-nefarious deeds that you are allowing to happen.

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Note: There are paragraphs of text in the beginning of each section of the game, that are more explanatory in regards to the history and realities of multiple authoritarian regimes than the gameplay itself. You are not required to read those, those were made only to explain the metaphorical symbols more clearly.

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On this game worked:

- Glow - Our programmer, resident maniac and head of this project. Works perfectly to the moment when things go down south, then it is pain in the ass to work with him

- Fjana - Our graphical designer who also came up with the game idea and mechanics, (also wrote this description, hello dear world!), did many miscellaneous tasks in the process

- Gar - Our sound engineer, our resident American thanks to which we have to switch between our native language and english constantly because he joins our voice chat on random occasions

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Controls:

- Arrow keys: Movement

- R: Restart

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Software used:

- Godot v3.2.2
- Aseprite v1.2.25
- Adobe Photoshop CS6 v13.0
- Audacity v2.2.2
- LMMS v1.2.2
Online Audio Converter

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Some things you might find interesting:

- There are some easter eggs in the game, hope you find at least some

- We have more cringy & stupid jokes on our profile describtion

- Each game is an allegory, either by name, by mechanics or by a connection to an authoritarian regimes

- The Democracy Index average of the world has been steadily dropping for the last 8 years

- 59 countries are currently ranked by the Democracy Index as "Authoritarian". Those countries currently have a 37.1% of the world population, approximately 2.88 billion people

- 23 democracies are now according to the V-Dem Institute currently in the process of autocratization

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AND FINALLY: THIS IS NOT AN ENCOURAGEMENT OF AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES, NOR IS IT PROMOTING BUILDING THOSE. PLEASE PLAY UNTIL THE END NOT TO MISS THE POINT

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Download

Download
ColumnWin64.exe 33 MB
Download
ColumnLinux64.x86_64 38 MB
Download
ColumnMacOSX.zip 14 MB

Install instructions

1) Download the correct file for your OS.

2) Open the file that has been downloaded.

3) Run "ColumnWin64.exe" on Windows, "ColumnLinux64.x86_64" on Linux or "ColumnMacOSX/LD 50.app/Contents/MacOS/LD 50" file on MacOSX.

4) Have fun!

5) Go vote on your next election!

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