It was the "natural traverses," that's right.

Awww, that's a pity about my little peopleses, but I get it. :)

This is oddly and wonderfully terrifying.

Region 8: The Prairie of the Enchanted Canals

This prairie region appears to be supernaturally fortified against the infiltration of the tall corn to the west.

Mighty herds of herbivores graze here, including Rainbow-Coat Deer, Checkered Horses, and Trumpeting Hornbeasts in their thousands, whose mighty horns have a gorgeous silvery patina. They track back and forth across the grasslands, but there are certain barriers they do not cross, and that sequester one species from another.

Those barriers are artificial canals that crisscross the landscape. The canals don't just contain water: they contain water spirits who are bound into the canals by magical glyphs carved into the stone tens of thousands of years into the past by parties unknown. The canals all converge at the heart of the prairie in what would form a natural gathering site.

Region 2: The Soul-Eater Wastes

This is a "cold desert" or semi-desert temperate region with sparse sagebrush vegetation. Most of the rain it sees comes in winter, and there are large salt beds in the depressions along its coasts. 

The crags in the northwest and south provide nests for a terrifying predator: a colossal twenty-five-foot spirit viper with translucent, diamond-colored scales and a transparent body that glitters under direct sunlight but can be hard to track in the wide expanses of the Wastes' rocky terrain. The spirit viper's venom does not infect the blood: it infects the soul, convincing the target that there is no hope in this world and no choice but to give up, whereupon they succumb to lassitude and are consumed by the immense serpent at its leisure.

Rumor has it that a flower grows here that can counteract the spirit viper's venom. The trouble is that it's only visible to the pure of heart.

I thought the various personages showing up to lecture the player about "the death of the author" were a very nice touch. I've literally watched that bullshit play out in real time.

It was unexpected to have a chud show up here to literally say "they're coming for your games," I have this mistaken expectation that they'll develop finesse at some point, but luckily, they're always around to correct me.

This was bleakly funny. A compact way of exposing people to simple facts they may otherwise be avoiding. I laughed pretty hard when hasanabi shows up to lecture you if you stop buying copies of the game.

As a Shakespeare and Elizabethan history enthusiast, I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this: the archly humorous musical interludes, the voice acting, the intricate stories and the details you need to keep track of, the impeccable pop-up art style, the colourful cast of characters and the rather sweet portrayal of the protagonist Simon Forman (though we get more than a few hints of darker sides of his character). I've never seen anything quite like it, and I'll look forward to playing back through it at least once more to see some different outcomes. 

Potential players should be warned that notwithstanding the light touch of its delivery, some of the material herein deals with dark topics, including murder, torture, xenophobia and xenophobic violence, harassment and stalking, and sexual exploitation and predation. It's rarely anything stronger than you might find in a typical Shakespeare play, granted... but if you know how dark the Bard can get, then know that this game doesn't remotely shy away from those deeper waters either. 

That doesn't in the least detract, however, from this addictive and profoundly funny gaming experience. Great work by the developers. 

That "economic anxiety" excuse has never really held up so far as I can see, but I won't get too deep into that.

Seemed to manifest as a pretty consistent pattern in about a dozen playthroughs, though granted, it was far from the only secondary preference they had and NatSec was more common. In general, though, I was able to have multiple nativist virtual voters in the front rank of my supporters while doing pretty radically pro-immigrant things provided I did enough pro-worker and pro-socialist things, which doesn't strike me as being how nativism works at all. 

(In general I have questions about nativist voters *allowing* secondary priorities to overrule their nativism in the environment being simulated, but that's a larger question.)

It's not a deal-breaker. Just something that put me on notice about certain ideological things going on. I still had fun.

Essentially a "President Bernie Sanders" simulator -- there are ideological telltales like the conflation of M4A with universal healthcare, or the behaviors of certain virtual voters that hint at a model that assumes that nativist voters will prioritize "socialist" initiatives over racism (as the Sanders campaign was evidently counting on before voters rejected it) -- but it's nevertheless a cool game that offers up interesting and difficult choices and trade-offs, provides a bit of replayability and foregrounds some interesting ideas. Above all, it's fun.