A great global war has ended. The world’s population is displaced, chaos has ruptured the land, and so, for there to be true rest and respite, the borders of the world must be redrawn.
Peacemakers 1919 puts you in the shoes of a treaty writer facing this arduous task.
Peacemakers 1919, from Borington, is a fascinating, yet sombre, experience. It touches on both current affairs — of migration, who has a home and where, and the historical importance of it’s inspiration: The Paris peace talks of 1919.
The premise of the game is quite simple; you use several tools (like a further simplified MS Paint) to reassign the ownership of zones which have been deemed neutral. It feels like there’s real indication of whether the red or blue faction won the war (EDIT – The developer states that the blue side is the winner). Perhaps in the wake of such a large war, the factions have both decided that there was truly no winner.
As you play through the game, more factors come into consideration than simply assigning the lands and assigning them well. Exclaves, while initially removable, later serve as sticking points for the perfect score. Population centres and natural resources are also mentioned, and would have been historic sticking points. Alongside all of this, another goal is to try to get the borders as angular as possible, with straight borders being preferred to wonky, curvy ones.
While at its heart, it is a very sad game, if only through what it doesn’t explain about the situation, it is also a cathartic one for people who play a lot of strategy games. There’s frequent complaints from player bases of 4X, grand strategy and wargaming games, of a term called border gore. Border gore is a term used when borders are illogical, stretching off in odd angles or reaching out like tendrils. For those players, Peacemakers 1919 will probably be a soothing experience.
Peacemakers 1919 is available on browser through Armor Games.
DISCLOSURE – Jupiter Hadley, an editor with Indie Games Plus, is an employee of Armor Games. This has in no way affected our decision to cover Peacemakers 1919.
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Thank you so much for writing about the game! It really surprised me, as I thought of it as just another random, inconsequential browser game. I would add the tiny correction (if I may), that in later levels it is mentioned, that the blue faction is the winner.