Despotism 3K

Despotism 3K was reviewed on a PS4

Managing almost anything can be a ton of fun. Figuring out how to balance your resources while strategically handling any issues that pop up is addictive and entertaining. In Despotism 3K, you’ll have to manage your human colony by making sure that the humans’ stamina doesn’t drop to zero. When they’re fully fatigued, your puny humans will die. You’ll have to manage their stamina while juggling the colony’s constant consumption of electricity and food. Your main objective in the game is to last 25 days without losing your humans or your electricity.

What is Despotism 3K?

Despotism 3K is a 2D management sim that’s difficult yet extremely addictive and entertaining. The whole premise of the game is similar to any one of Rick and Morty’s bizarre episodes, and it revels in its absurdity. You play as a malevolent AI that’s hellbent on making the lives of humans a living hell. That’s why you’re managing a well-oiled human colony, where people are nothing more than cogs in a machine.

You have four machines to fill with humans, the first is a running wheel that generates electricity, the second lets them breed and generates more humans, the third generates food and the last is a bioreactor where you can drown the humans into acid and get some nutrition and energy out of them.

That last one is disturbing because of its implication that you’re turning your humans into cannibals, but who cares about that as long as the machines keep on churning and turning. You put your humans into the machines using a bunch of metal arms, which can be upgraded to move more than one human at once.

Each of the machines will slowly tire out your humans, so you’ll have to swap them whenever their stamina drops to a low level. That’s why constantly breeding new humans will keep you in the clear with plenty of humans to swap.

Every 20 seconds, the machines will spend a fraction of the colony’s electricity, and if you lose all electricity, you lose the game.  This threshold of electricity consumption is your enemy in Despotism. You can upgrade each of the machines but their upgrades requires a massive amount of electricity. This requires you to keep an eye on the timer, on your electricity levels and on the amount needed for the upgrade.

You’ll truly feel like an AI as you scurry about trying to handle everything all at once. The beauty of Despotism is that it’s extremely addictive and fast paced. You’re always one wrong button away from losing and restarting from scratch. Losing isn’t the end of the world though, as you can immediately start a new playthrough and try again.

Random Events and Dark Humor

Every once in a while, an event will pop up that’ll give you several options of dealing with it. These events are the game’s attempt at injecting a bit of black humor. They modify the game based on what you choose, for better or worse.

There are good modifiers that may make your metal arms move faster or help you produce more resources, and then there are the bad modifiers. Having one of the bad modifiers makes the already challenging task of managing the human farm even more difficult. I’ve tried to talk about the events and the modifiers as vaguely as possible since they’re really the highlight of the game and shouldn’t be spoiled.

One of my favorite events was the humans rioting and watching them climbing and scurrying out of the machines. That’s the great thing about the events; each of them is accompanied by an on-screen animation or representation of what just happened. They provide a much-needed variety to the game and the modifiers keep it from getting too stale. There’s a second and more challenging campaign to unlock once you finish the main one, and there’s an endless mode to unlock as well.

Overall,

Despotism 3K is an addictive game that’ll keep you busy for some time as you juggle all of the machines at once. The events also succeed at keeping things fresh. The game is challenging, addictive and a ton of fun. If you’re looking for a fresh management sim to sink a few hours into, then make sure to try out Despotism 3K.

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Special thanks go to OverGamez for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Despotism 3K if you

• Love a difficult management sim
• Enjoy dark and black humor
• Don’t mind losing over and over again
• Love a creative and unique premise
• Don’t mind flinging humans into the acid vat of the bioreactor

Despotism 3K Score

9/10