Lysander Writing

Democranot began as a question: can a board game make a political argument more effectively than an essay? Drawing on Ian Bogost’s theory of procedural rhetoric — the idea that games express ideas through their rule systems — it proposes that interactivity might be the most honest format for a critique of democratic dysfunction, because players do not just observe the argument, they live it.

Set in the fictional state of Harondar, the game puts two to four players inside a broken democracy and dares them to win without breaking it further. The Radicalisation Track makes that dare mechanical: every sectarian move brings the whole system closer to collapse. The game ends when someone wins — or when nobody can.

Further development of this game will be published as I make progress, for now, you can check out the plan in my portfolio.