Nation States: A very simple but fun online political simulation game

[Note: This review was written by Adrian, the Freeware Elite. Visit his tech blog at: Freeware Elite.com]

Version Tested: 1.0 (final version)

Description: NationStates is an online political simulation game that is totally free, unlike Soccer Manager in which you can buy gold accounts. You can create different nations with strange prefixes (Republic, Dominion, People’s Republic, Most Serene Kingdom, etc.) and manage them through your browser.

There is also something called the World Assembly, which is similar to the United Nations, but has a whole lot more countries (around 11000) and different “regions” which can be freely chosen. However, the World Assembly membership is totally voluntary. Here are some more notes on this online game:

• Creating a new nation: You have to define the name and prefix of your nation, which has to be unique and not used by other NationStates users. Afterwards, you can select or upload the flag of your country, and define the History, Government style (“Liberal” or “Sensible” is recommended, or else your nation will become very corrupt. If you want to play around though, try selecting “Evil” or “Pyschotic”), the Currency, national Animal and also your National Motto.
• You are asked to supply an email address. You are recommended to do so, and you must if you want to join the World Assembly because they will send you a comfirmation email. See This page for their privacy policy.
• When you select your password, remember to select one that is not easy to guess, otherwise someone may “hack” your nation.
• For the final step of creating a new nation, you are asked to fill in a questionaire regarding your political views. This will decide the type of your nation. For example, if you “completely disagree” to the last question about criminals, your nation will have no prisons, and the crime rate will be very high.
• Once you log in, you are presented with your main screen (see firstmost screenshot). It shows the political freedom, civil rights, and economy rates for your nation, new national happenings, your country’s description (depending on the info you provided during the creation process).





• You are presented every day (or twice everyday, only on weekdays if you choose at the settings) with issues at your Parliament. You are requested to adopt suggestions by your people during those Parliament meetings. These solutions will decide any new laws your country will adopt and the type of country (right-wing utopia, New York Times democracy, Conservative democracy, etc.). You may choose to dismiss that issue, and nothing will be changed in your nation.



• Telegrams are messages sent by other nations to you. To send messages to other nations, find their nations page and send.



• The World Assembly is a large organization of nations that allow you to vote for resolutions, endorse other nations, etc.

• The region is the part of the world you are currently residing in. You can change this to any nation you like, or even create a new region and let others join.



• Every day, new World Assembly census reports are compiled and are presented to all nations. The ratings are according to region and the whole world.
• That’s all I will tell you, and it is more than enough. Investigate yourselves because this game is fun!

Note that if you do not log on to your nation in 28 days, it will be automatically deleted, and everything will be lost. Also, you may create multiple nations, but only one nation is allowed to join the World Assembly to prevent cheating. The game can detect cheating by the above method by IP address, email address, user names, and a multiple of other methods that we don’t know of.

Verdict: This is a very good political simulation game that accurately simulates political problems and friendship between different nations. However, if war and trade were included in the game, it would be much, much more fun. It has already been suggested, but it seems that the author, Max Barry is not available to make the game better. What a pity!

Compatiblity: All major browsers, require Java and Flash sometimes.

Go to www.nationstates.net to play the game!

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