Plutocracy

Plutocracy is exactly the sort of crowdfunding bait that catches me: capitalist space opera, time management, rotating planets, and markets waiting to be squeezed. At least it was cheap. The cover is lovely; the interior panels look as though a child attacked them with watercolours.

At its core, you manage time, use the planets' rotation to take shortcuts, and contest area majorities. The promise is clear: read the map's next movement and get where you need to be before everyone else does.

You also manipulate the market, so position, timing, and profit ought to pull against each other. Instead, it becomes a dry optimisation exercise with one real path; in the fixed/balanced setup especially, turn order more or less decides the winner. The interaction is present on paper and in the majorities, but it never gets the chance to become interesting.

That is a shame, because multiple goods markets per planet and some changes to distances and the timing of rotation might have made this a respectable just another euro. As it stands, its chief thrill is reading reviews and watching videos search for depth where there is only card stock. Hard pass.