This was, I assume, written on the whiteboard at Red Echoes' conception. It's a well-balanced mix. In the demo, you take in the story through the eyes of three characters who each have their own special abilities—increasing revolutionary fervour wherever they're based, or putting a cap on reactionary zealotry, or decreasing the pressure experienced by other characters—and your task on a gameplay level is moving them around the board to where those abilities will be most useful when the turn ends.

Choices you make in the visual novel sections will impact the state of the game board: a decrease in fervour here, an increase in pressure there. Naturally, as a rashid proletarian you'll be inclined to make all the choices that lead Germany into a glorious red dawn, but playing a long game may mean making choices that go against your conscience and even permit the development of reaction in some quarters—short-term sacrifices for, you hope, long-term gains.

It would have been easy, I think, to make a version of this game that simply put you in the shoes of Spartacist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. At least for the duration of the demo, that's not the case. You're in the shoes of Germany's hoi polloi: a dockworker, a radically inclined journalist, a mother whose sons are off dying in the Kaiser's war. It's an antidote to Great Man history and a perspective you rarely get in media: war-weary Germans toward the end of WW1.

At least in the early game, which is what the demo covers, it's not too difficult to play your cards right.

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