I'm quite sure you're familiar with the brilliant British political satire called Yes Prime Minister. Well now is your chance to be Jim Hacker that very same prime minister in charge (if you really think the PM was in charge) of that very same cabinet!
With that technicality out of the way I can finally start telling you about the game itself. It’s political intrigue at the highest level. You’ll be the leader of an entire country. Off course you’re not a dictator, so your actions aren’t unlimited, but there’s quite a lot you will be able to do.
All the decisions you make will be made in a form of a dialogue with the other person giving you suggestions and you choosing from them. Every answer will have a different result. Sometimes you’ll be able to wiggle your way out if you make a wrong decision, but sometimes you won’t.
To help you a little there’s a notice in the drawer saying: Diplomacy is about surviving until the end of the century, politics is about surviving until next week.
This is certainly true! There is a popularity counter in your office (it’s behind the Union Jack) that starts off with 50% popularity. You’ll be able to see it either raise or fall, depending on your choices.
There are some things that will be happening according to plan (the scheduled appointments), but some random things can happen as well.
So it’s up to you to handle the situation to the best of your ability and hopefully become popular and successful enough to stay in the office.
The sounds are extremely basic and only used to draw your attention to the devices in your office. If the phone rings it will start blinking and you’ll hear an annoying sound. This is very handy however, because you can’t see the whole office at once, so you’d always have to move around to see if you’re being called, or getting a fax.
The graphics in the game are also very basic. There’s the picture of your office, there are small pictures of the people you talk too and there are different insignia on the official papers, but besides that, the graphics are not even needed (you can experience the game only as a series of menus if you change that DOSBox line to machine=hercules).
Still the game is good fun for all who love political intrigue or are simply the fans of the series (you can even play a prank on Sir Humphrey – and I’m certain this is the only game that allows you to do that ;)
Now first off I need to warn you that in order to play this game you’ll need DOSBox and you’ll need to change it’s settings a bit!
In the DOSBox.conf file you need to change the following line: machine=vga into machine=tandy. Otherwise you won’t be able to see any menus in the game, nor read any messages (CGA mode allows you to see all that, but the picture is so poor you’ll hardly be able to make out the letters).
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