This is an improved version compared to what I posted one year ago. The first version was terrible and it was full of errors and bugs.

Source Code

My purpose is not to be political. I just wanted to create a game in which the player has opportunity to try keeping country running using Central Bank operations in a situation where all indicators are flashing red. I chose Russia because it is one of the simpliest form of economy and even I can create a kind of presentation how it works. For me, it would be totally impossible to create similar game about Japan, Germany or USA.

For example, you can take loans, print money, beg food (Gorby did that), sell food reserves, sell state owned companies, and even take them back by force. And to this version, I included monthly economy report and yearly agriculture report. Everything to do has consequences, and maybe doing right choises you can postpone bankrupty or even avoid it.

Some Rules

• You can take loans eight times. And every time the interest payment increases.

• You can print money nine times. And every time value of Ruble decreases 50 percent.

• More you beg food, less you get. (There is random.)

• If there are excess deaths, and you beg food, you get a little more.

• When you beg food, your popularity decreases a little.

• If you sell state owned firms, income from export decreases.

• If you take back firms you sold, you won't get any humanitarian aid, and you can not take loans.

• If you do not buy components, excess death rate goes up, and revenue from export shrinks. But if you do, excess death rate goes down into the negative territory.

• If there is bad harvest and you do not have enough food in the reserves, game is over.

• If your popularity shrinks to below 10 percent, game is over.

You can do better

This is a very simplistic model about a simplistic economic system. Many things are missing: Inflation, unemployment rate, stock market, GDP, interest rate, private banks, savings accounts, taxation, etc. However, the game calculates worker's salary on dollars and it is a kind of "inflation". If it goes below 100 USD, your popularity goes down, too. Code is included and people are free to use it for creating a better version.

Some Variables Explained

Created: Qbasic 1.1
Compiled: Qbasic 4.5

You can download both Qbasic 1.1 and 4.5. But if you use Version 1.1 you might be forced to change 'SCREEN 12' to 'SCREEN 0' at line 1. (I am not sure about that). And if you use Qbasic 1.1, you can not make an exe-file.

Enjoy the game (hopefully). Staggering 99 KB when compiled (1.5 * Commodore 64 memory limit).

May 2026

hurricaneharvey64@gmail.com