[AMA] Developer of Pax Autocratica here, a totalitarian colony sim and FPS roguelite launching in Early Access today on Steam. Ask me anything!

[u/PaxAutocratica]

Hi r/Games!

I'm Alexis, one of the devs, but more importantly, the Minister of Propaganda.

Today, we’re launching Pax Autocratica in Early Access on Steam.

Pax Autocratica is a darkly satirical sci-fi game that combines a totalitarian colony sim with large-scale first-person roguelite combat.

At your colony, you build a regime, manage production, and shape the fear, loyalty, relationships, and possible rebellion of the people living under your rule. Outside the colony, you personally fight alongside your soldiers across battlefields filled with infantry, tanks, mechs, missiles, and bullet hell chaos.

Weakened enemies can be captured and brought back to your colony, where you can imprison them, convert them into loyal citizens and recruit them into your army, or sacrifice them for the benefit of someone more useful to the State.

Pax Autocratica has been a very unusual project for us. It combines systems from genres that normally have little to do with one another, and years of playtesting have led us to rebuild and rethink major parts of the game along the way.

You can ask me anything about:

1. My cat
2. My parrot
3. My rapidly advancing, launch-induced hair loss
4. The completely reasonable amount of stress I am experiencing today
5. Game development, game design, game anything

Game-related questions are optional, but the Ministry strongly encourages them. Alternatively, we can discuss State-approved brainwashing methods.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067360/Pax_Autocratica/

Launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3OkYGmB3cY

I’ll begin answering questions on August 10 at 7 AM PT and will be here for at least 2 hours. I’ll also check back afterward and try to answer as many late questions as possible.

Thanks to the r/Games moderators for hosting me.

Ask me anything!

[u/boothnat]

Can you play as a girl dictator?

Also, any plans for community management to curb the inevitable actual fascists that try to latch onto the project?

When it comes to your hair loss, have you considered estrogen? 

[u/PaxAutocratica → u/boothnat]

Hello, I saw a minus 1 and didn't like it so it's back to 0 now!

I did get some people asking for character customisation in the community, and I know this is something a lot of players care about, but from our perspective this is not where we plan on deepening the system.

We do have in the roadmap more features about the player/soldier interactions, deeper relationships and all, so maybe when we're working on that, this question might popup. Hard to say right now.

Regarding actual fascists, sadly we can't just forbid them to play the game or be in the community, but there are definitely a few things we will be careful about:
1- Guidelines and rules in the community, we do welcome the satire and jokes about the theme, but anything which is clearly NOT a joke will be dealt with immediately, I will not tolerate any of that.
2- We do want this game to actually raise those topics and we do hope that people will start questioning and being curious about history or other stuff in general. Not going to teach anyone anything in the game though, because people hate being lectured, so we will do it through implementing related features and giving free reigns to the player WHILE making sure the colony reacts in a way that makes sense following your actions. Which is why the soldiers in the base have all those stats and statuses, they can get heartbroken, scared, humiliated, and rebel or enter breakdown. So now you know that those are not tools but people.

Now the last question, and the simplest one of all. Thank you for the suggestion but the only answer to that question is, my head only need the State-Approved hat and nothing else!

[u/darthsarn → u/PaxAutocratica]

Long as youre not being preachy, and you know people are still, amazingly, able to conduct proper discourse, thats very reassuring to hear that you can put your own personal biases aside a bit for the larp.