Austerity

About this board game

Austerity is a compact solo board game for one player, with a playing time of about 20 minutes, in which you run a nation struggling under the burden of international debt.

Your decisions shape how the nation’s money is spent, but you do not directly choose the effects those decisions have. You must decide how to handle areas such as:

• Police funding
• Investment in private enterprise
• Cracking down on welfare cheats
• Borrowing more money
• Raising taxes

The country’s financial condition is represented by a collection of coloured cubes in a bag. Cubes are drawn in pairs, and each pair corresponds to a different event. These events often require you to make another decision, creating an uncertain chain of consequences from the choices you have made.

Adding cubes to the bag is part of your control over the nation. You can choose to fund different public institutions, borrow even more money, or raise taxes, yet the resulting effects remain outside your direct control. The tension comes from balancing immediate choices against the country’s wider financial situation.

To succeed, you must escape debt before your bad decisions catch up with you. If they do, you will be out of office and out on the street with the rest of them. With its compact format and draw-based events, Austerity presents a focused solo challenge about public spending, political decisions, and financial uncertainty.