Republic of KorzarkiaMinistry of Finance and National Reconstruction
A macroeconomic strategy game
Boom and Bust: A Minister's Dilemma
The old government has fallen. The Korzar is losing value by the hour, three banks are
hiding losses large enough to take the rest of the system with them, and the provisional
government has just handed you powers no finance minister has ever held here.
Under the Emergency Economic Administration Act, the bearer is granted direct
authority over taxation and customs, public expenditure and salaries, sovereign
borrowing, banking regulation and emergency liquidity, foreign exchange and reserves,
the restructuring of state enterprises, capital controls, and all economic
negotiation with foreign governments.
The President may dismiss the bearer. Parliament may investigate the bearer. The
courts may, in theory, restrain the bearer.
In practice there is no one else left in the building.
The post
You did not have to come back
You left as a child
Your family fled during the collapse and settled in Franklin, capital of
Columbiana. You studied public finance there and spent your career at the
Union Monetary Fund telling other people's governments that their budgets
were fictional and their banks were insolvent.
You volunteered
Most qualified expatriates refused. Your colleagues called the decision
irrational; senior officials gave the provisional government months. You
told the recruitment commission that the country would never be stable if
everyone able to rebuild it stayed abroad.
Then the post arrived
The first death threat came before the office had working electricity. A
parcel followed containing a single devalued banknote and a rifle cartridge.
The Presidential Guard assigned officers to your home. Some of them served
the old regime.
The desk
Everything is decided from one room
There is no map screen and no city to build. There is a desk, five books, a
drawer of stamps, a tray that keeps filling, and a terminal that tells you, only
afterwards, what you did.
Ministerial Notebook
Monetary Book
Fiscal Policy Book
Elections & Accounts
Briefing & Forecasting
The tray
Five files a quarter, minimum
Each one is somebody's actual problem, costed to the last figure. None of them
are wrong to ask.
BankingUrgent
Foreign-currency mortgage book
The People's Mortgage Office reports that a third of its book is written in
XAU to households paid in Korzars. It requests guidance and, failing that,
indemnity.
IndustryRoutine
Enterprise social assets
The combine still runs the town's clinic, nursery and holiday camp. Selling
the combine means somebody else must run them, or nobody will.
HealthStanding
Maternity ward consolidation
Closing four small wards saves a measurable sum and adds forty minutes to the
journey for the districts they served.
The drawer
Four ways to answer
It gets paid for. The money comes from a line you will have to shorten somewhere else.
The budget holds. The district that asked remembers who refused it, and for how long.
Next quarter's problem, at next quarter's prices. Some things get cheaper by waiting. Most do not.
It never reaches the Gazette. It also never stops being true.
Or you sign nothing, drop the file in the referral tray, and let the President
own the decision. He will notice that you did.
The terminal
The quarter closes, and the numbers arrive
Official statistics, market prices, bond yields and staff forecasts. Not the truth,
the published version of it.
Official Statistical TerminalQuarter 14, Kvatograd
Inflation, annualised41.7 %
Policy rate28.0 %
Real GDP growth−2.4 %
Prime-age employment61.2 %
Korzars per XAU214.60
Reserves, months of imports1.9
Public debt / GDP88.4 %
Presidential confidence34 / 100
> QUERY: EQUILIBRIUM OUTPUT, NEUTRAL RATE, CAPITAL-FLIGHT PRESSURE
> NOT AVAILABLE TO THIS OFFICE
The updated model
The economy is HERMETIC
HERMETIC stands for Heterogeneous, Expectational, Reconciled,
Macro-Economic, Temporal Investment Cycle. It is three models that
have to agree every quarter: agents make decisions, the accounts reconcile,
and the projection engine closes output, inflation and the exchange rate.
VCESR simulation architecture
People with their own books
Acting households, firms and banks borrow, hire, save, price and default on
their own balance sheets. The agent model carries
who receives new money, who bears a shock and which failures spread through credit.
Accounts that cannot disappear
A stock-flow-consistent ledger gives every asset a liability and every payment
a counterparty. That reconciled economy feeds a quarterly projection model, so
credit, demand, prices, jobs, the currency, reserves and debt close together.
A central bank, not a slider
Set the policy rate, work the balance sheet, run auctions, intervene in foreign
exchange and manage a sovereign bond book written in Korzar and gold. Credibility
determines how far an order travels before it reaches the loans people actually pay.
You never see the true state. You see CPI, the yield curve, the Gazette and the figures
your statistical office can defend. Better institutions narrow the error; they do not
remove it.
The atlas
Ten countries share the map
Fuel, ports, mines, votes, or simply that you fail publicly enough to prove a
point. The world atlas on your desk gives you their statistics. It does not
give you their intentions.
ColumbianaInvestment and military guarantees, tied to reforms you may not survive.
VolgarFuel and protection, in exchange for a say in who governs.
LuyangFactories and credit, secured against strategic infrastructure.
NambekoThe breakaway east: hungry, revolutionary and still claiming reunification.
QasranOil, and the only price on the continent you cannot argue with.
SeluciaMerchant fleets that trade with every bloc, and ask no questions.
VelmoraBanking cantons. Discreet, and useful to a minister with plans.
EdrisiaSocial democracy, national wage agreements, and a great deal of advice.
RoveniaLand, family, continuity, and grain you may badly need.
The verdict
How ministries end
Eight of these are things that happen to you. One of them is a door, and nobody
will ever offer it. You have to have been arranging it, quietly, for years.
IKvatograd Hyperinflation: the Korzar ceased functioning as money.
IISovereign Default: foreign payments stopped, and with them the fuel and the credit.
IIIDismissed by the President: your extraordinary authority was revoked.
IVNambekan Invasion: foreign-backed forces crossed the frontier.
VRepudiated by the Country: no faction would defend the ministry.
VIThe Kvatograd Rising: the ministry stopped existing.
VIIMilitary Government: the general staff relieved the civilians.
VIIIGovernment Collapse: the cabinet went down and took you with it.
IXA quiet flight, an account abroad, and a country that does not extradite.
And if none of them arrive, you serve out the fifteen years and the country tells
you what it thinks you were.
Enquiries
Questions the ministry will answer
Do I need to know economics to play?
No. Every order states in plain language what it does, what it costs and who
it will annoy, before you sign it. A field guide sits in the desk explaining
the quarterly routine and how to read the terminal. Economists will find the
model holds up. Everybody else will find that the politics arrives first.
How deep is the economic simulation?
The updated HERMETIC engine joins three layers that must agree each quarter:
an agent-based model in which households, firms and banks act on their own balance sheets; a
stock-flow-consistent ledger in which every claim has a counterpart; and a
quarterly projection model that closes output, inflation and the exchange rate.
Its central-bank suite includes the policy rate, balance sheet, auctions,
foreign-exchange intervention and sovereign debt in Korzar and gold. The player
sees published statistics, never the true state.
How long is a campaign?
Sixty quarters, or fifteen years, with an election every twelve quarters.
If you are still in office at the end of it, the campaign carries on for as
long as you hold on, or claw your way back.
What do I actually do each quarter?
Read or delegate the desk files. Check the Gazette, the visitor waiting
outside and the election countdown. Set the budget line by line. Spend your
three policy orders on tax, labour, housing, banking, trade or business law.
Set the policy rate, the banking order and the exchange-rate regime. Read the
terminal. Close the quarter and find out.
Can I delegate the paperwork?
You can hire an assistant out of your own salary and give them rules to work
by. They are fast, they are cheap, and they will occasionally approve a
contract you would have read twice, miss a piece of espionage, or leave a
trail an auditor can follow straight back to you.
Is there a family?
There is a spouse, two children, a rent book and a salary that is paid in the
currency you are responsible for. They make requests. The game does not
treat this as a side quest.
Where and when can I play it?
Windows PC first, built in Godot 4. It is in development. The store page is
below, and the fastest way to hear the moment it opens is to wishlist it.
Korzarkia must rise
Whether it remembers you as its rescuer, its auctioneer, or its last finance
minister is decided behind one office door.
