Geoplanetical

January 1, 2026. You take over a country as it stood that morning: its debt, its population, its economy, and the war already underway in Ukraine. Push a pension reform through a parliament that can say no, negotiate with striking unions, run for a seat on the UN Security Council. There is no scenario waiting for you, and every other government is already making its own decisions.

Geoplanetical is a geopolitical simulation I am building on my own. Play any of 200+ nations and territories, as the government or as the opposition. The other countries set their budgets, pass laws, hold elections, impose sanctions, offer alliances and can declare war, on you included.

Every number has a cause

Numbers are never decoration here. Each one comes from something that actually happens in your country:

• A strike pulls workers out of businesses and public services.

• A coal or gas plant burns fuel to make electricity. When energy runs short, prices climb, companies struggle and your tax revenue falls.

• A blockade cuts seaborne trade. An occupied province stops producing.

• More money for hospitals changes little without the staff to use it.

• Companies invest and hire on their own, following demand. 100+ goods move between around thirty sectors and across world trade.

When a number moves, the game shows you why. The Situation Room sums up what is being decided without you, what is getting worse at home and what the world is doing to you. Since you last looked recaps what changed. Where these numbers come from breaks down your approval and stability. Your ministers give advice on their portfolios.

Raise taxes to save public services? Push back the retirement age? Change the electoral system, knowing it could cost you your majority? I won't tell you which policy is right. Shrink the state or grow it, deregulate or regulate, disarm or militarize: the game doesn't grade your ideology, it works out what comes next.

Parliament can say no

• Change the laws people care about: minimum wage, working hours, paid leave, retirement age, abortion, death penalty, cannabis (banned, decriminalized, medical, regulated or state monopoly), religion, a yearly immigration cap, asylum rules.

• Get them through: vote forecasts, your party's voting line, debates, executive sign-off, vetoes, constitutional review.

• Face the voters: every chamber and every office has its own calendar, some renewed only in part. Coalitions form after the vote, cohabitation can happen, and you can call early elections when your office allows it. Results come in live on election night.

• Run your party: raise funds, recruit activists, campaign, and make up to three promises. The game tracks them through your term: keep them and you gain credibility, break them and you pay for it.

• Lose, and keep playing: an election defeat does not end the game. Stay on in opposition and table a motion of no confidence, take over the party now in power, or play as someone else in the same world.

• Lobby in private through Cablegram: ask an opposition leader to back your bill, or a foreign leader to vote with you at the UN. They accept or refuse depending on your relationship.

Rewrite the constitution

100+ institutional choices: electoral system, an upper house to create or abolish, powers of parliament, executive veto, judicial review, term lengths and limits, how the head of state is chosen, emergency powers, succession. Monarchies come with heirs, regencies and royal decrees.

The game won't stop you from building a contradictory regime. It lets you find out whether it survives.

Hold society together

• Nearly twenty social groups, each with income before and after tax, wealth, satisfaction and militancy. They react to the cost of living, unemployment, housing and public services.

• Unions: negotiate a strike and compare how each union responds to your offer.

• Protests: facilitate, contain, disperse, order an armed crackdown or send in the army. People can die, and things can escalate.

• Housing: rent control that spreads as leases renew, caps on mortgage rate resets, social housing.

• Public services: health, education, justice, police, prisons and administration, each with its own doctrine, staff and capacity. Build schools, hospitals, police stations, courts and prisons province by province.

• Migration: arrivals and departures by age and skill, brain drain, communities and diasporas.

• Natural disasters: fund prevention against wildfires, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis, respond when one hits, rebuild province by province, send aid abroad.

Run the economy

• Budget: income tax brackets, VAT by product category, spending, debt, the policy rate, or an independent central bank.

• Crisis: when currency reserves run dry, markets shut you out or you default, the IMF can step in with a loan paid in tranches, each one tied to a review of your budget.

• Finance: bail out a bank, nationalize it or wind it down, restructure a company, run a sovereign wealth fund, impose capital controls, close the stock exchange.

• Industry: launch programs to reshore production, export more, create jobs or cut a critical dependency.