In Citizens of Earth, you are the Vice President … of Earth. You wake up the day after your inauguration to protesters outside your house. From there the adventure takes you outside of your hometown to solve a problem; they were being intentionally vague when we asked what the main issue of the game was. The story is humorous and we were told that Earthbound was a big influence on the project. 
What makes Citizens of Earth even more interesting is that there are over 40 recruitable characters to fight for you—Vice Presidents don’t fight for themselves, that would be silly. In fact, every single person in your hometown can be recruited after doing some things for them.
They are a very odd assortment of people: a hobo, a crazy cat lady, a body builder, a doughnut lover, etc. Each character has their own skills that are related to what they are, your Mom is a healer and the hobo is a thief but it is deeper than just those archetypes. Plus, with the amount of characters there are in the game, there will be a lot of shuffling and strategy to the battles.
Speaking of battles they are pretty standard old school Final Fantasy style and aren’t anything too flashy. What is more interesting is that each of the characters’ skills have modifications. So the normal attack is one option or you can attack all enemies on screen while taking a damage reduction. Every skill had this and it was nice to group all these like skills together. Additionally, each skill either uses up a unit of energy or generates it. So there is a flow to the battles and another layer of strategy.
This may seem complex but the developer promised that that goal wasn’t to overwhelm so the game will be a little more lighthearted and fun rather than grind heavy. What we played was funny and fun but we’d be more interested in seeing what the game turns into rather than the open section that I played. Still, there are not many games like this at all anymore, so it is worth checking out if you’re fan of the genre. It is sure to fulfill that RPG niche. Citizens of Earth is being developed by Eden Industries and you can find out more about it here.
