THE POWERS THAT BE:
FAULT LINES

The comparable titles prove the audience exists. Frostpunk proved players will engage with moral dilemmas in strategy games. This War of Mine proved civilian-perspective stories sell. Papers, Please proved bureaucratic gameplay can be compelling. But none of them simulate the actual mechanics of political crisis — legitimacy, faction dynamics, institutional decay, and the fog of contested information. That's our space.

This is not a power fantasy. This is a game about the weight of responsibility. The player sits at the intersection of competing demands from six factions, 18 interlocking systems, and a city of 3.2 million people whose trust they haven't earned. The game rewards careful, long-term thinking over decisive single moves. And thanks to our AI media pipeline, every player's crisis looks different.

Walk the investor through the scenario. The player reads competing news reports, consults their crisis cabinet (3 specialized seats with different capabilities), and must decide: deploy emergency services (costs legitimacy with the labor bloc), issue a public statement (buys time but doesn't solve the problem), or investigate the corruption angle (high reward but high risk, and it takes turns to pay off). Whatever they choose, the consequences ripple through 18 interconnected meters over the next 1-4 turns. This is the core loop — and it's deeply compelling.

Every design choice about Merova serves gameplay. The island is closed — there's no calling in the army or fleeing to another country. Supply chains are visible — when a ship doesn't arrive, the player can see the empty dock. Climate events hit the whole island at once. And the 8 districts create a legible map where the player can see tension spreading in real time.

The 18-meter system is what gives this game replayability and depth. Every action shifts multiple meters. Cracking down on protests reduces Spark Volatility immediately but raises Grievance and Retaliatory Pressure 2-3 turns later. The delayed effects are the game's signature mechanic — players learn to think in terms of debt, not just immediate results.

This principle is essential for both the game's integrity and its market position. We're not making a violence simulator. We're making a game about the cost of power. The 18+ rating gives us the space to show that cost honestly — a hospital overflowing because of the player's order, not a cinematic explosion. This is the same storytelling space that prestige TV occupies.

This is the technology that makes this game impossible to clone quickly. The pipeline is provider-agnostic — we can swap from Runway to whatever comes next with a config change, not a rewrite. By installment 3, the media generation is essentially free. And the content is inherently streamable — every streamer produces unique footage, which is organic marketing we couldn't buy.

Political strategy games either abstract politics into warfare (Civilization) or simplify it into policy sliders (Democracy). Nobody is building the systems-level simulation of how institutions actually work under pressure. Our closest spiritual comparables — Frostpunk and This War of Mine — proved the audience will pay premium prices for moral weight in strategy games.

The strategy audience is well-established and willing to pay premium. But the real growth opportunity is the crossover audience — people who watch political thrillers, read crisis journalism, and care about governance but haven't found a game that speaks to those interests. The AI cinematic pipeline makes this game visually compelling enough to reach that audience through streaming and social media.

The franchise is the business model. Installment 1 builds the engine, the pipeline, and the audience. Installments 2-5 are primarily content + design work on an established platform. Development costs drop by 40-60% per installment while revenue remains comparable. The legacy system creates an emotional hook — players want to see how their Fault Lines decisions play out in Public Order.

The architecture is the real product. The engine is a pure function — given a game state and an action, it always produces the same result. This makes it trivially testable, replayable, and moddable. The content layer is data, not code. And the AI media pipeline is designed to swap providers as the landscape evolves. We're not betting on any single AI company; we're betting on the trajectory of the entire industry.

The conservative case assumes we sell comparably to Democracy 4. The moderate case assumes Suzerain-level awareness with better production values. The optimistic case assumes breakout comparable to Against the Storm. AI costs are manageable at premium pricing and decrease over time. The franchise model means even the conservative case is profitable by installment 2.

The team structure is lean by design. The architecture is specifically built to amplify a small team through AI tools. The engine being pure TypeScript with strict types means AI coding assistants are highly effective. The content being schema-validated JSON means a narrative designer can create game content without writing code.

The timeline is aggressive but achievable. The design documentation is already mature — we're not starting from a blank page. The 18-meter system, incident pipeline, dilemma catalog, and setting bible are all designed and validated. Phase 2 is the critical risk gate — if the vertical slice plays well with placeholder art, the rest is execution.

We're seeking enough runway to reach a visually compelling demo by month 11. That demo serves double duty: it's the basis for early access and press coverage, and it's a fundable milestone for follow-on investment if we want to extend the runway. The 45% engineering allocation reflects that this is a tech-first studio.

The biggest risk is content sensitivity — but we've been designing for it from day one. The violence principle, the coordinator POV, the 18+ rating, and the content warning system are all part of the design, not afterthoughts. The second biggest risk is AI costs, which we mitigate through architecture and the fundamental cost trajectory of the industry.

The timing argument is essential. Two years ago, the AI media pipeline would have cost $50-100 per session — non-viable. Two years from now, someone else will have built it. The window is now.

Close with the vision. This isn't just a game — it's a new genre. Political crisis simulation doesn't exist yet as a category. Frostpunk opened the door to "moral weight in strategy." We're walking through it. The franchise architecture, the AI pipeline, and the design maturity give us a 2-3 year head start over anyone who tries to follow.

Leave them with the appendix offer. The depth of the design documentation is itself a signal of seriousness. Most pitches at this stage have a concept and a prototype. We have a complete design system — 18 meters with cross-effects, 14 incident types, 12 dilemma templates, a full setting bible, and a technical architecture. The engineering risk is execution, not design. That's a much better risk profile for an investor.