Later the player is warned, "Neocolonialism is a game about finance bankers attempting to extract as much wealth from the world as possible."

Esther Alter first got the idea in September 2011, when she was playing German-style board games with friends in Boston.

A friend jokingly wondered how to make a board game "based solely on the Marxist theory of neocolonialism—in which developed-world institutions control developing-world countries by purely financial means.

"[3] A few months later, Alter reported her progress on the game so far, on a blog, with her screenname "sampedestal": "Neocolonialism is a complex cocktail of background financial and political decisions conjured by a global potpourri of rich people.

"[4] Later that month she wrote: I have designed Neocolonialism to make some pretty significant approximations of what in reality is an exceedingly complicated system.

Perhaps the most interesting conversation I had was with a lady about why I chose to make a serious game that forces players to be the antagonists rather than the 'good guys' in the world.

[6]Rock, Paper, Shotgun wrote that "it seems very smart" and predicted that a game will "spin out into a world of dodgy dealings, with players ... making secret deals to get themselves into power, collaborating in their political policies, and looking to exploit the cheap labour of the developing world as much as possible".

"[7] Hardcore Gamer observed: Grand Theft Auto may let you go nuts in a city or even a state, but for a truly large-scale bout of pure psychopathy you'll want to manipulate global markets.

NeoColonialism puts you in the shoes of a banker treating the world as your own personal financial piñata, and you won't stop beating it until every last penny is hammered out and all that's left is a sad little pile of confetti.

While this looks to be a complex game that will take some careful work from Subaltern to pull off, it's hard to turn down the chance to be a powerful, amoral, behind-the-scenes conspirator and exploiter.

Nevertheless, Kill Screen praised the game itself: "Alter's desire to portray a specific point of view cannot overpower the dynamic inherent in what [she] has crafted.