It's a short, edutainment clicker/city-builder that I've never really seen together before.

Post/Capitalism, while offering a clear presentation of the hellscape of capitalism within a condensed slice of an urban environment, also offers something different. That is socialist economics that are often misrepresented, not understood, ignored or invisible in popular media and education.

How the game discusses capitalism is something more advanced, better articulated, and presented prettier than most elementary textbooks I've seen. For this, it's outstanding educational tool for exploring what our cities look like, but it could also exist as a visual aid to something like Marx's Capital for the first half, and Kropotkin's Mutual Aid in the latter.

The city the player builds is a small slice of a beautiful socialist or anarchist economy. While it doesn't explain the different tendencies or strategies to implement such an economy, it still does what a lot of multimedia won't do: demonstrate what the world can look like when we transition out of capitalism.

Unfortunately, there were some mechanics I was confused about, and I had to watch someone finish the game for the last couple of buildings. I thought I went through the appropriate order of operations to finish the game, but I think I left the game without it completing and changing colour.

Overall, this is an important game that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in how a video game can discuss possible futures, to teachers who want an interactive element to their coursework, and anyone who wants a narrative on socialism from a source that actually understands the economics and not some political talking head on mainstream media.

Reviewed on May 24, 2023


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