Cyclic Fruition Number One, by D E Haynes
The ABCs of Hands and Heads
This is a hyperlink story that is also a demonstration of the author’s own Spiki framework. Dialogue is shown in script form with descriptions written in literary style. To progress the story, you can click underlined text within the story page or click on the choices/passage names at the bottom bar. You can actually go to any passage in the game, regardless of where you are, by accessing the sandwich menu at the top left.
Cyclic Fruition centers around a trio (there is a narrator, who sometimes speaks as if they are part of the group, but they’re not acknowledged by the others so I was confused if they were an actual entity) who decide to explore a nearby town since their train hasn’t arrived. While going through the story you will quickly, or eventually, learn that the game continuously loops. You will go back to the same starting passages (text does not change with repetitions, so you are reading the exact same words) once you explore a thread enough.
The word choice and overall structure made this story interesting to think about (I liked the descriptions), if a little hard to digest. One particular thread takes a turn into a philosophical and linguistic discussion after a short verse section. One of these passages contains a hyperlink that doesn’t shunt you towards the next passage, but rather a blog post about a real-life textbook, with its origin story quite similar to what just happened in the story. Within the blog post is a diagram that explicitly inspired Cyclic Fruition’s structure, including the direct names of some passages. After reading the post, my appreciation of the game’s goals definitely increased, as I understood what the author was going for, though I still find my comprehension of the final product uncertain and incomplete.
Still, I was immersed in this little world, and it was a great way to get me to start thinking more about behavior structure.
Social Democracy: Popular Front, by Autumn Chen
Ils ne passeront pas
I’ve played the previous two Social Democracy games, and enjoyed them even if I didn’t fully understand what I was doing most of the time. The same goes for Popular Front. I played on normal difficulty, and found it much more approachable than Petrograd 1917, where I felt like I was chasing an endless amount of tails while being thrown to the wolves in that game. At least in Popular Front, it felt like the wolves were polite enough, though this may also be chalked up to my prior experience with the series.
You take control of the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière/French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO for short) political party, and must create and lead a coalition strong enough to endure workers strikes, political infighting, and fascism both at home and abroad. Gameplay uses the same systems as previous Social Democracy games - take actions through advisors on a 6 month basis or through randomly drawn cards. Every month or so historical events, economic disasters, or angry factions/parties will come up and throw a wrench in your plans.
In my first playthrough, I came to a quick game over when I didn’t enact strike demands, causing the SFIO to be kicked out of the ruling coalition and fall into obscurity. My second playthrough went all in against domestic fascism, pro-workers rights (but leaving the capitalist structure unchanged), and checking off every goal in the Popular Front’s platform. My greatest woes were budget, an uncertain economy, and appeasing the Senate, the Radical-Socialists, the French Communist Party, and internal division among the SFIO (so many advisor actions were spent on party and coalition dissent…).
Honestly, internal affairs were more stressful than Germany itself. France easily repelled German attack with two rounds of defensive-focused rearmament and UK aid. I’m not sure if that’s the intended difficulty, as I couldn’t take the option to persuade the UK during the Munich conference because they thought I was too weak, so I thought I’d be crushed but turns out not. I consistently caused 100,000 casualties for the Germans and 00,000 among my troops, which might be a bug?
I found some other things that I think were oversights (in the foreign relations storylet, Poland’s relationship status doesn’t display and it also won’t let you back out like it does with other countries so you are forced to send diplomats there), plus what could be a display error in the stats sidebar (Popular Front enthusiasm went from none to 8.194577954319762 after a propaganda campaign in July 1938, and continued to be displayed in numbers instead of words for some time; a small difference between the Defense and War sections where armor divisions production is 0.25/month in Defense, 0/month in War, all other division productions were the same between both sections).
At the end of my playthrough, the final outcome of the war is uncertain, and the SFIO would probably get trounced come election time, but France, and the Popular Front, endures. When I reached the end, I had much more of an urge to replay this game compared to the previous two Social Democracies. Once the Spring Thing is over and the game is released publicly, of course.
Endgame Achievements and Stats
Completed Achievements in this Playthrough
Vas-y Léon - reach the end of the game without losing power or military defeat.
Miracle Économique - successfully revitalize the economy.
La Victoire du Front Populaire - accomplish the goals of the Popular Front.
Status
September 1940
Party actions remaining: 1
Total actions remaining: 5
Party
Resources available: 0
SFIO position: in government - Popular Front
Internal dissent: medium
Popular Front enthusiasm: very low
Government
President: Lebrun
Prime Minister: Blum (SFIO)
Governing coalition: Popular Front
PRRRS dissent: low
PCF dissent: low
Senate opposition: medium
Chamber of Deputies composition:
SFIO: 25.7%
PRRRS: 20.3%
PCF: 13%
USR + Misc. Left: 4.8%
AD: 18.1%
PDP + Misc. Right: 6.3%
FR: 11.9%
Budget: 0
Next election: May 1941
Economics
Inflation: 12.2%
Unemployment: 14.1%
Economic growth: 0.9%
Inter-Party Relations
PRRRS: neutral
PCF: neutral
USR + Misc. Left: warm
AD: hostile
FR: hostile
PDP + Misc. Right: cold
Relations with Other Groups
CGT: very friendly
Internal Factions of the SFIO
Gauche Révolutionnaire strength: weak, dissent: high
Bataille Socialiste strength: moderate, dissent: medium
Centre strength: strong, dissent: very low
Pacifist strength: moderate, dissent: high
Military
37 standing divisions
35 A-series reserve divisions
35 B-series reserve divisions
7 Armor divisions
16 Anti-air units
16 Anti-tank units
Fighters: 1130
Bombers: 377
Military Production
Standing divisions: 0.3333333333333333/month
A-series reserve divisions: 0.3333333333333333/month
B-series reserve divisions: 0.3333333333333333/month
Armor divisions: 0.25/month
Anti-air: 0.5/month
Anti-tank: 0.5/month
Fighters: 20/month
Bombers: 6/month
Projected First-round Election Results
SFIO: 22%
PRRRS: 16%
PCF: 10%
USR + Misc. Left: 3%
AD: 22%
FR: 17%
PDP + Misc. Right: 10%
Detailed results for each demographic
Workers: SFIO: 62%, PRRRS: 1%, PCF: 30%, USR + Misc. Left: 4%, AD: 1%; FR: 1%, PDP + Misc. Right: 1%
White-Collar: SFIO: 14%, PRRRS: 29%, PCF: 0%, USR + Misc. Left: 5%, AD: 32%; FR: 14%, PDP + Misc. Right: 7%,
Petit Bourgeois: SFIO: 4%, PRRRS: 26%, PCF: 0%, USR + Misc. Left: 5%, AD: 33%; FR: 20%, PDP + Misc. Right: 13%,
Rural: SFIO: 2%, PRRRS: 33%, PCF: 0%, USR + Misc. Left: 5%, AD: 33%; FR: 20%, PDP + Misc. Right: 7%,
Unemployed: SFIO: 47%, PRRRS: 1%, PCF: 40%, USR + Misc. Left: 0%, AD: 0%; FR: 4%, PDP + Misc. Right: 8%,
Catholics: SFIO: 10%, PRRRS: 5%, PCF: 1%, USR + Misc. Left: 0%, AD: 28%; FR: 33%, PDP + Misc. Right: 24%,
Support for the Republic: 40%
Reserves
3 standing divisions
3 A-series reserve divisions
3 B-series reserve divisions
3 Armor divisions
2 Anti-air units
0 Anti-tank units
Fighters: 1130
Bombers: 377
Northern Belgian Front
22 standing divisions
13 A-series reserve divisions
13 B-series reserve divisions
2 Armor divisions
1 Anti-air units
0 Anti-tank units
Southern Belgium/Ardennes Front
10 standing divisions
6 A-series reserve divisions
6 B-series reserve divisions
1 Armor divisions
3 Anti-air units
0 Anti-tank units
Alsace-Lorraine/Maginot Line Front
17 standing divisions
10 A-series reserve divisions
10 B-series reserve divisions
1 Armor divisions
7 Anti-air units
0 Anti-tank units
Italian Front
5 standing divisions
3 A-series reserve divisions
3 B-series reserve divisions
0 Armor divisions
3 Anti-air units
0 Anti-tank units