Despite the numbering, this is not a major update, and is mostly a bug-fixing release.

Updates:

• fixed a number of events outcomes - thank you for submitting bug reports!
• rebalancing

I am now at a good place with this game; there are no major features that I want to add. It may still receive updates, especially if new bugs are discovered.

The broader context - if you only care about the game, feel free to skip:

If the current election results hold, the next president of the United States will be a man who has promised a campaign of terror against immigrants and trans people in this country and bloodshed against enemies abroad, who has promised to run roughshod over democracy to inflict revenge against his perceived opponents, especially the left, and who has promised to destroy public health. He has been described by his former closest advisors as a fascist, and had once launched a plot to remain in power by force.

I am a trans woman and immigrant living in the United States. This game, Social Democracy: An Alternate History (or Red Autumn as some have taken to calling it), was made in part as a way for me to cope with and understand what seemed like a rising fascism in America, of the possible rise of a government that would treat me as subhuman. This is not new to America, of course; my trans, Asian, and immigrant ancestors (among many other groups) have long been dehumanized by successive American governments. I allowed myself to believe that the current America was on a track to break its history (and present) of hatred, however slowly.

I don’t know what to do; is making vaguely leftist political games a worthwhile endeavor at a time like this? I wish I could describe how we can organize and agitate our way out of this. I’m not an expert, and I doubt even experts have the answers right now. Maybe making games like this is the best way I could contribute to the struggle; I don’t know. All I hope is that there will be a struggle; we have to at least try, and I hope that I can play a small part, even as just another warm body.

Whatever happens, I still believe in social democracy, in equality and justice and freedom, in the modern descendants of the ideals promulgated in the Weimar Republic, however imperfectly, by people such as Otto Wels, Julius Leber, and Toni Sender. I hope we can learn some lessons about resisting fascism from their actions and inactions.

To quote Otto Wels, in a speech made during the passage of the Enabling Act: “Freedom and life can be taken from us, but not our honor…. In this historic hour, we German Social Democrats solemnly pledge ourselves to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No Enabling Act gives you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible.”