An iron law of the universe: if you make a game based around the struggles of early 20th-century German social democracy, I am honour-bound to play it. It was true for Social Democracy: An Alternate History and it's true for Red Echoes: Berlin, an upcoming political sim from Morningrise Games that puts you at the centre of the 1919 Spartacist uprising—a suppressed communist revolt in post-war Weimar Germany.
The game is due out in Q1 of next year but it already has a demo you can play right now. I've been checking it out a bit and here are my takeaways, in digestible, card-based form.
What if a board game was a visual novel and that visual novel knew what the Zimmerwald Conference was?
This was, I assume, written on the whiteboard at Red Echoes' conception. It's a well-balanced mix. In the demo, you take in the story through the eyes of three characters who each have their own special abilities—increasing revolutionary fervour wherever they're based, or putting a cap on reactionary zealotry, or decreasing the pressure experienced by other characters—and your task on a gameplay level is moving them around the board to where those abilities will be most useful when the turn ends.
Balancing morality with pragmatism
Choices you make in the visual novel sections will impact the state of the game board: a decrease in fervour here, an increase in pressure there. Naturally, as a rashid proletarian you'll be inclined to make all the choices that lead Germany into a glorious red dawn, but playing a long game may mean making choices that go against your conscience and even permit the development of reaction in some quarters—short-term sacrifices for, you hope, long-term gains.
You aren't the Big Communist Cheeses
It would have been easy, I think, to make a version of this game that simply put you in the shoes of Spartacist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. At least for the duration of the demo, that's not the case. You're in the shoes of Germany's hoi polloi: a dockworker, a radically inclined journalist, a mother whose sons are off dying in the Kaiser's war. It's an antidote to Great Man history and a perspective you rarely get in media: war-weary Germans toward the end of WW1.
It's perhaps a tad easy-going
At least in the early game, which is what the demo covers, it's not too difficult to play your cards right. With a little bit of forethought about how best to utilise my characters' abilities it was pretty easy to put the kibosh on the swelling reaction in most quarters of Berlin while, simultaneously, sending red sympathies sky-high in others.
Rather lovely design
Red Echoes is a relatively simple game in terms of its layout, but it's still pretty striking. The map is done in the style of Weimar-era graphic design (it reminds me a little of constructivism, but then most things do), and it gradually fills in with pools of red for the revolution, or yellow for reaction, as the turns slip by and Germany's contradictions sharpen.
Solid writing
Being so much a visual novel, Red Echoes feels like a game that lives or dies by the strength of its writing. Even a few typos could be fatal to the thing it's trying to construct. Fortunately, it's been strong in this arena from what I've seen so far, with believable dialogue and characters that don't feel like they're just there to exposit at you about what Germany was like in 1918/19.
So, yes, Red Echoes is a rather intriguing little sim with a unique focus, and it promises to only eat up three or four hours of your time when the entire thing releases early next year. I will be keeping an eye on it. Rosa, Karl, and the revolution met with an unpleasant end in real life, but I reckon I can turn it around if you give me a shot.
