CW for police brutality and violence.
The inciting incident is heavy. The police kill a pea, and a group of citizens have had enough. They take to the streets with signs and demands. That’s where it starts. Initially you’re just trying to grow the protest by finding more citizens and roping them into the movement. As you grow, so does the city’s reaction. Initially cops will just watch the protests. But then they’ll start setting up barricades, blocking your movement.
And as you keep growing, they’ll start detaining peas.
This is all non-violent so far.
It’s like a game of blob tag. If you never played that as a kid, it starts out with one person being It, then each person they tag enters the blob via hand holding until eventually the blob takes over the entire field. As you move your blob through city streets, parks, and plazas, the peas you contact join the mass movement.
Each night passes with a news program. First they don’t even talk about you. Then they’ll say you have valid reasons, but are going about this the wrong way. Then you’re made out to be violent, disruptive, and dangerous. There’s a politician who goes on air sympathizing with your cause, but quickly starts saying “They’ve gone too far.”
PDP is a game that is very pessimistic about resisting state power. The game does not like cops, it does not like politicians, and it does not like mass media.
Eventually the police bring out crowd control measures, your blob splits, and it becomes a riot.
On a side note, I doubt the developers of the game are saying “This is how riots happen and what they look like.” I think the point they’re making is that the violence is usually initiated by the cops.
This is the 2nd phase of the game. Instead of directing the movements of a single group, you’re overseeing the movements and actions of multiple blobs. As these blobs grow, they continue to split. Your goal is still to grow the movement, but this time contact with the police is far more likely to result in peas leaving the movement. This is also when the game introduces logistics. Your movement needs medics, food, etc. Each night you get the option of focusing on obtaining some resource. You’re often stretched too thin, so you really need to decide what’s most necessary at any given time.
The nightly news broadcast fully starts lying about you. According to them you’re insurgents from outside the state, you’re terrorists, you’re anarchists. Eventually if you’re successful enough the politician from earlier declares a state of emergency and the military comes in.
And so we enter the 3rd phase of Peas Demand Peace. Guerilla warfare. You essentially control the city. The gameplay switches almost entirely to logistics management and you stop micromanaging the peas.
It’s bleak honestly. Commerce to the city gets cut off, so you slowly run out of resources. You can convert the parks to farms, but it takes several in-game days to get any food from them, and it still isn’t enough to feed the populace. This is the end of the game right now. You just try to survive as long as possible before you inevitably fail. It’s really depressing.
The devs say they’re working on DLC for a 4th phase, but I don’t really have high hopes for it being cheerful.
I don’t know. This game feels like a realistic take on the struggles revolutionary movements face, but that makes it difficult to recommend because it amounts to nothing. Maybe I’m looking at this game the wrong way? I’m glad it exists, even if it leaves me with unpleasant feelings. How do you discuss something fairly if its whole purpose is to upset you. PDP successfully makes me sad. And that makes me want to never play it again.
I give Peas Demand Peace no score
What would stars mean to it anyways.