You might be familiar with the concept of the Political Compass – a coordinate system that visually places your social and economic views between the two axes: economic (left-right, x-axis) and social (authoritarian–libertarian, y-axis). Well, this time this system will not only help you to establish your views but also define what your President’s policy will look like!
Once you start the game, your President’s views will be placed randomly somewhere in the middle grey square called ‘Mainstream Centrism’. And this is where the fun begins.



As the President, you’ll have to manage several projects around specific issues. These projects will define your presidency and also outline your President’s path on the Political Compass. The projects will reveal your political aspirations, and with every subsequent day, they will move your president towards the desired political ideology.



Of course, there’s more to that! Your President’s position on the Political Compass will have an impact on the kinds of bills he will be able to sign. Depending on the ideology you find yourself subscribing to, you’ll get the bills that will correspond to your political views. Universal Basic Income for a communist President? There you go! Complete free-market deregulation for an anarcho-capitalist President? Be my guest!



That’s still not everything, though! The types of bills your President decides to support will eventually help him solve various political and economic crises that will be appearing throughout the presidency. What are the crises? Well, that’s a different big subject for another Devblog!

Give us your feedback about the whole system and tell us which political ideology is going to be the most appealing to your President!

We hope you’ve had good Christmas holidays and are ready to bid farewell to 2020. Well, I mean… who isn’t?

This is a perfect moment to share with you what we’ve been up to these couple of weeks. That’s because – aside from the “new year, new me” shenanigans – we’ve finished gathering and analyzing all the feedback you’ve given us on IAYP: Prologue. And we’re ready to make some bold design decisions!

First and foremost: we’re incredibly thankful to everybody who played our game! Double points if you cared enough to share your experiences with us – both negative and positive. And while it feels great to receive praise, we’ve still got a game to finish, so we cannot afford to overlook the common criticisms, i.e. stability & optimization issues, confusing gameplay and railroading.

Although the main game is going to immensely improve on all of those, your feedback has highlighted your expectations of IAYP. We’d really like to make IAYP unforgettable for you – not just in a singular choose-your-own-adventure type of way, but also in a more randomized and uncontrolled setting. We want our game to be a bit bolder and more unhinged than other political simulators, without dropping the charade all the way – after all, as this past decade has shown us, politics really is all about appearances!

• We’re going to make IAYP more dynamic and roguelite-ish, by, for example:
  
  1. Making each playthrough denser. Less waiting, more choices!
     
  2. Getting rid of $ altogether and instead using the economy stat as currency
     
  3. Introducing some small persistent progression systems (e.g. project/tech trees start of hidden, but once researched, remain uncovered in subsequent playthroughs)
     
  4. Including some form of point/evaluation system at the end of each playthrough
     
  5. much, much more…
• We’re going to put more emphasis on protagonist’s political self-identification, introducing a new feature – political compass, complete with 19 political affiliations that will affect the type of legislation that the president signs on a near-daily basis!
  
• We’re going to focus on two distinct gameplay pillars:
  
  1. Largely randomized dialogues and events: the meat of the story and the spice of life!
     
  2. Robust secondary features to give the players (including those looking for a more serious experience) numerous opportunities for min-maxing and strategizing. This means that we’ll be interlinking all features closely and giving them enough depth to turn e.g. the map or project management into an optional mini-game
• We’re expanding the importance of Action Points – no need to worry about all these features right away, given the limitations!

Okay, that’s enough for now, before I get too excited… Of course, it’s not all good news: as some of you might have already been suspecting, this means that we still have some things to do, pushing back the publishing of the product a few extra months. Realistically – I do not think this could have been avoided, especially in light of the optimization issues present in the prologue. We hate to do it to you again, but we have to get our cyber playground in order, else everyone could just end up getting punked.

And meanwhile, why don’t you share your thoughts in #president-chat? Are we moving in the right direction? Or am I just rambling like a madman? Are those mutually exclusive?

Thank you for your continuous trust and support! We’ll do our best to not betray your expectations & keep you up to date with our affairs! Tons of love from the team, we wish you all best of luck in 2021!

We continue to implement your ideas into the game. For now, we want to release a small patch that should improve loading times on HDD drives. We're adding a few other things as well, hopefully it will improve your prologue experience;).

• Game Settings: Run In Background switch added. While loading, the app has Run In Background active on default, so it's still loading when minimized. You can change this option whenever you want.
  
• Better loading times - we've found out what caused the game to load so slowly and we've fixed it. Our work is not yet done here, but the improvements are big. In the nearest future the loading times will get even quicker.
  
• Items description now shown in each turn - this is our experimental feature, to deepen the immersion. Tell us what you think about it.
  
• Fixed some bugs
  
• Probably added more bugs than before

We are in touch. Remember that you can write to us on Discord. We also read all your opinions sent via the form available in the game :). Your opinion is very important to us. It helps us improve our game.

Cheers!


I Am Your President: Prologue - Patch Notes #2

Loading time improvements!

• Language & typo corrections
  
• Numerous optimization tweaks
  
• Fixed incorrect stat change prompts in some of the dialogue choices
  
• Improved plot flags
  
• Added credits! The last one is pretty important, as we’ve included the nicknames of our Discord supporters – yes, you! You’ve really fueled our creative flames and given us some great ideas, some of which you’ll be able to see in the main game.

Huge thank you for those of you that took a moment to share their feedback on our game on Steam. We cannot overstate how helpful that is to us! Talk to you soon & sit tight while we’re uploading the patch! And remember what your devs say: do not click on the loading screen while the game is loading, cause Windows might incorrectly interpret it as a freeze (picture related)! We're working on fixing the issue ASAP - thank you for your patience!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201330/I_Am_Your_President_Prologue/

We are proud to announce that I Am Your President: Prologue is finally out! Moreover, it is – now and forever – free to play!

You can find it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201330/

Experience the events leading up to the presidency of Your President – from the perspective of his predecessor! Try to finish this self-contained story to get a taste of what it means to occupy the oval office and know whose shoes you will be filling in the main game. Just keep in mind the fact that being the leader of the free world is no easy task and the outcome of this grand balancing act will be – in the best case scenario – bittersweet.

The prologue is also a great way to familiarize yourself with the core game mechanics and features, most of which are included, albeit in a much more straightforward form. Sign legislation, post on social media, tackle international crises as they unfold, survive the barrage of questions at a press conference and much, much more… Overall, completing the prologue should take you approximately 40 minutes, though that can vary depending on the path you choose. And if you are a completionist – there’s a bunch of Steam achievements for you to unlock!

A huge “thank you” goes out to everyone that has been supporting IAYP project and – as always – if you have any questions or feedback to us, feel free to drop us a message on our Discord – we read all of them and continuously improve based on your input!

Talk to you soon!
~IAYP team

Tis the time for some more news regarding IAYP!

The biggest of which is: We are about to publish the prologue to I Am Your President – scheduled for release on Dec 2nd @ 9:00 AM PST! And once published, it’s going to be here to stay: for free & forever!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201330/I_Am_Your_President_Prologue/

Those of you that had a chance to play our demo will recognize the story of the prologue – albeit slightly tweaked and expanded so that we could showcase a few previously unseen features (such as the map and another location outside of the White House)! Oh, and this time around, your successes (and failures) will be immortalized via Steam achievements. Overall we are hoping to give you a smoother and more complete experience that will eventually serve as a proper teaser for the main game.

Speaking of which, from the moment we release the prologue, our entire team’s main focus is going to shift entirely to polishing and testing the main plotline – a huge milestone we’re really excited about! Hopefully, the next time we break the silence we will have something cool to tell you!

And of course, once again, thank you guys for your ongoing love and support! We're doing our best to answer all of your questions at #ask-us-anything (Discord) – and the closer the game is to the finished product, the easier they are to answer.

So feel free to share your thoughts & head down to Steam to check out I Am Your President: Prologue once it comes out! :)

Join our Discord here:

We wanted to thank all of you for playing the demo and remind – those of you that still haven’t found the time to do so – that it will only be available until:


Do not despair though, we’ve been working like crazy and are getting closer and closer to completing the next thing on our radar: the prologue! And yes – it’s going to be expanded & polished according to your feedback and available for free and forever!

Speaking of feedback, huge “thank you” goes to everybody that’s been giving us pointers on our discord server; I know some of you saw your suggestions patched into the game & you can be sure there’s more to come in the final version of the prologue. On that note, we’re trying to gather some standardized intel, so if you feel like sharing your opinion on some of the more specific aspects of IAYP, you can do it through this form we’ve prepared:

https://forms.gle/3rBAoFtc8qXXMk2u8

Okay, that’ll be it (for now), we hope you had some fun with our demo & we will keep you posted – as soon as there’s anything to announce!

Cheers :)

Demo update!

First of all, thank you all so much for your feedback and all the kind words! We’ve been working hard on improving the demo as much as possible & we’re happy to say that we’re launching an update that should both make the game easier to run and improve the overall playing experience.

Here’s the full changelog:
• The lighting effects have been optimized, which should help with the FPS on older PCs
• Lowered the overall difficulty of the game & introduced some balance changes
• Save system bugfix – it should be functional now
• Tooltips have been made more visible
• In order to help with the confusion, we’ve added a few tutorial boxes that explain how the game’s basics work
• Rich text tags for documents that require signing have been fixed
• Fixed the cabinet member summary screen
• Fixed the industry icon in the cabinet member menu
• Added an option to skip the intro if the player finished it in the previous playthroughs
• Added an animated indicator for development strategies that are being researched
• Fixed the problem with the player being transported back to the oval office after the endgame cutscene
• Fixed the bug that made it possible to accept the statements without filling in all the boxes
• Improved the display of the closing credits
• Fixed Life of the Party and Savoir-Fair quests; they should work fine now
• Various text corrections
• Various fixes to hidden plot hooks
• Various email, article and Screecher QoL improvements and fixes (e.g. bigger database of Screecher commentators)
• Visual improvements to the development strategies and projects to make them more user-friendly
• Longer answer times for the press conference
• The default resolutions of the textures has been lowered to improve performance on older machines
• Better scaling of statistic change tooltips
• Sound effects added to the email interface
• The game supports some other screen proportions now

It’s upon us... the demo of I Am Your President!

If you are reading this message it means that I am already dead and/or that IAYP’s demo is either out or mere minutes from being released!

So, feel free to join the stampede, and discover what happens to our protagonist’s predecessor in this self-contained story! Hurry though, as the demo will only be available through the autumn edition of Steam Game Festival (Oct 7th-13th) – free of charge of course!

And once you give it a try, be sure to share your opinion either on our discord server or an in-game form (available from the main menu)! At this stage of IAYP’s development your feedback is absolutely invaluable for us devs: help us squash all the bugs and make IAYP as dope as humanly possible!

P.S: We know there is a problem with screen resolution detection;). You can set it to your own in the menu. By then it should be okay. ;)

See you in the oval office!

Dear fans, we hope you’re doing well in these strange times!

We’ve spent the last few weeks furiously debating and considering all foreseeable angles and can
finally provide you with a bit of an insight into our little IAYP project. I’ll divide this text into two
parts: raw facts (for the TL;DR people out there) and a meandering, in-depth explanation for those of
you that appreciate brutal honesty and full transparency.

I’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room: the final version of I Am Your President will not be
released in October – for reasons I’ll get into in the second part. Instead, on the 7th, we will release a short demo available throughout the autumn edition of The Steam Game Festival. We’d love to hear
your thoughts on the features presented in the demo version – not only in terms of bugs or potential
quality-of-life improvements, but also in more general terms. Think of it as a vibe check. ;)

The demo will include the prologue’s storyline; this way we can avoid spoiling the main game, while
presenting a consistent narrative. Relive the election year as the former president: see if you manage
to fulfill political expectations and experience the events that unfold directly before the start of the
main game! And don’t get discouraged if you fail at first – there’s always a strategy or a project you
can invest in to bolster your vulnerabilities.

We’re also considering putting together an early access version of IAYP and providing those of you
that’d be interested in participating with beta keys. We still have tons of ideas we’d love to include in the final version and your dynamic feedback would help us tweak them in real time! And on that note,
we could even prepare a roadmap to give you some idea of what features we’ll be implementing
next, so let us know what you think!

Finally, as per the original plan, the prologue in its final form will be published 2-3 weeks before the
main release. Since it’s a self-contained storyline, it serves as a perfect testing ground for seeing how
adding various features impacts the gameplay.

To quote a famous British chef: it’s <bleep> raw!

Admittedly, it’s a bit embarrassing. We’ve got some good ideas, great ingredients and – most
importantly – amazingly supportive audience waiting for the final product! So, what went wrong?

1. We do not want to betray your expectations – nor the work we’ve already put into the game.
   We can release the full game only once; and as much as everyone in our small team would
   like to end the crunch, these final touches often make or break the gaming experience.
   
2. We’d still like to work on a portion of the features, and especially the interactions between
   various gameplay elements – as I’ve mentioned before: the core story and gameplay is ready,
   though we’re not entirely happy with how these cogs align. IAYP needs to pull off this crazy
   balancing act of being both narrative-driven and highly randomized, meaning that all the
   puzzles must fit together extremely well.
   
3. We’re still figuring out how pronounced certain things should be – as with any creative
   project, IAYP has evolved considerably throughout its development; we’ve added hidden
   stats, emotions, animations, dozens of project and tech trees and so much more. This
   requires us to update or interlink the older, plainer content and figure out if we’ve missed or
   overemphasized anything. Do people want more graphs? Fewer nukes? Skeletons? Memes?
   Only some solid testing will tell.
   
4. And lastly – on a more egotistical note – I feel personally responsible for some of the delay.
   You see, I’ve been tasked with fleshing out the main plotline and went a bit crazy with it
   (duh). I’ve thrown enough temper tantrums to convince my colleagues to prepare a number
   of features distinct from the rest of the game. And also include some unnecessarily complex
   formulas to make certain plotlines feel more organic. And also have branching out game
   endings. And… well, you get my point – and know who to blame in case you find the main
   plot dumb.

So, to sum up, we are sorry for delaying the release. At this moment, we’re a bit reluctant to suggest
a new release date – life has taught us that these things are really hard to gauge, but we’ll try to be
ultra honest and transparent with the game’s status. And, most importantly, to do our absolute best
to provide you with a great gaming experience! Anything less would be a disservice to your sustained
interest in and support of IAYP. Once again: thank you for your patience and all the kind words!

~Miłosz (Meatplanter)