The Fabulous Fear Machine Lets You Control The World The Good Old Fashioned Way

thegamer.com:

Last weekend, Steam hosted LudoNarraCon, an annual virtual event that brings together demos, panels, and fireside chats that celebrate the art of storytelling in video games. While I dabbled in more than a dozen demos throughout the weekend, the one that has really stuck with me is The Fabulous Fear Machine, a global domination strategy game about controlling the world through a campaign of fear. The Fabulous Fear Machine explores the fragility of both society and the human psyche while providing biting commentary about modern power structures, all while simultaneously playing with horror conventions with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. It isn’t a scary game - it’s a game about scary things.

You won’t find anything quite like The Fabulous Fear Machine, which just makes it all the more unnerving to play. While it resembles an outbreak sim like Plague Inc. in some ways, the strategy and methods for spreading the ‘disease’ of fear, are a lot more conceptually obscure than a simple virus, which infects bodies rather than minds. For that reason, there’s a somewhat steep learning curve to Fear Machine as you learn how to think like an agent of terror. Once you get the hang of it though, boy does it feel good to be evil.

Across each campaign, you follow several Masters of the Machine as they acquire power by spreading fear. In the demo, you play as an up-and-coming executive at a pharmaceutical company who aims to become a powerful and influential CEO. Her deal with the devil requires her to spread panic across Europe in the form of legends and urban myths. Within the chaos, the pharmaceutical company can emerge as a beacon of safety and authority, allowing your characters’ influence and power to grow. It’s a horrifically cynical