3rd World Farmer puts you in the shoes of a subsistence farmer, in what's presumably western Africa. You're given a family of four to control, a plot of fertile land and $50 to build your very own agrarian paradise deep in the heart of the Dark Continent. Each year, you get a rundown on how the farm did, as well as a report of the "Yearly Event," which usually has to do with a crop failing, poachers stealing your livestock or guerillas shaking you down for your excess cash.
The game reiterates the peril in which civilians in Africa live. It's a world of Catch-22s; you can't afford to gamble on your farm, but you have to in order to ensure its survival. All it takes is one bad year to sink you, and sooner or later, that year's going to come.
Oh, and if you're interested in playing, let me give you one piece of advice, a la The Graduate: I want to say one word, just one word. Chickens.
Real Lives
First, I was a girl in Burkina Faso. I grew up working odd jobs and died at 65 with enough of a nest egg to leave my surviving children relatively wealthy. Then, I was a boy in Germany. I grew up to be a military officer and keeled over at 45 of a heart attack. After that, I was a boy in New York who couldn't land a job, despite going to college, until I was 26. You can be all this and more in Real Lives.
Real Lives is a semi-random, scenario-based RPG. Each instance of the game begins at your character's birth, and as you age, you make choices about spending, investing, schooling and romance. Each year, you run a chance of coming across a life-changing event, like meeting your future spouse, getting pregnant, losing your job or coming down with syphilis.
While the chances are random, the stats you're born with and alter by going to school and choosing how you spend your free time (for example, if you choose to spend your time playing sports, your Endurance, Strength and Attractiveness go up, but you might lose some points in your Intelligence by not focusing directly on your studies) affect how likely you are to cope with trauma. The calamities differ by the socioeconomic status of the country. And when you're born, you're able to get a quick rundown of the country's financial, social and political welfare by reading popup information and checking out a few tabs built into the interface.
While Real Lives does a great job of exemplifying why it sucks to be a woman in the Third World, its randomizer is a bit heavy-handed. In my numerous run-throughs, I never once had a character who led a normal life, even my aforementioned American character. (He pulled a Gingrich and left his wife as she lay in the hospital, paralyzed. Then, he made a fortune on the stock market in his 50s, but a series of foul-ups left him on the government dole by the time he was 90.) No, the message you'll take away from Real Lives is you are a statistic waiting to happen. Be wary.
Also, helpful tip for surviving in the third world: Don't breed if you can avoid it.
