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Assembly City

Lead a citizens’ assembly through a roguelike deck-building campaign—mediate factions, manage crises, and keep the city from tearing itself apart.

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Gameplay overview

Policy puzzles as a deckbuilder

Assembly City is a Ren’Py project from Remarkable Games that blends narrative storytelling with deck-building strategy. Each run places you in charge of a citizens’ assembly tasked with tackling a hot-button civic issue. Draw cards that represent motions, facilitation techniques, or stakeholder appeals, then sequence them to steer the debate and keep support high.

Fail to balance competing interests and the session implodes; succeed and you’ll unlock new cards, characters, and future scenarios reflecting real-world civic processes.

Controls

Visual novel basics

  • Left-click / Space / Enter: Advance dialogue, confirm card plays, or choose menu options.
  • Right-click / Esc: Open the game menu for saves, settings, or to skip scenes.
  • Scroll wheel / Page Up/Page Down: Review previous text via the backlog.

Why play it?

Civic storytelling with replayability

  • Procedurally reshuffled decks and branching events keep each assembly session fresh.
  • Gorgeous illustrated cards and characters provide an approachable civic education angle.
  • Open-source Ren’Py project—extend it with your own policy scenarios or incorporate new mechanics.

Tips

Keep the assembly on track

  • Balance consensus-building cards with agenda progress—stalling too long drains momentum.
  • Monitor faction meters and play appeasement cards before crises erupt.
  • Use the backlog to reread stakeholder demands and plan future turns.

Our take

Why Assembly City is worth playing

Assembly City stands out because it treats civic process as something you actively shape rather than passively read about. The deck-building layer gives you tangible tools—motions, mediations, and stakeholder appeals—to experiment with, and runs often end with stories you want to talk about instead of just another score to screenshot.

The Ren’Py foundation also matters: instead of hiding systems behind dense menus, it uses visual-novel style framing and dialogue to make complex trade-offs feel approachable. It feels closer to facilitating a real-world workshop than pushing pieces around a board.

Who will enjoy it?

If you like card games such as Slay the Spire but wish they had more grounded themes, or you’re curious about citizens’ assemblies and participatory democracy, Assembly City is a great fit. Players looking for twitch reflexes or rapid-fire action may bounce off the slower, thinky pacing—but anyone who enjoys planning turns, reading factions, and watching narrative systems collide will find a lot to explore here.