A number of people have asked for the next dev diary to delve into the backstory of Stop the Press, and given that the past few weeks were spent doing code refactoring, performance improvements, and tackling tech debt, that seems like a much more interesting thing to be talking about.
As you'll have seen before, the game takes place in the country of Guadelique. It's a Caribbean island nation, which shares its island with the Spanish-speaking Guatelica to the East (more on them later).
In 1933, Guadelique is ruled by King Louis and his wife Maria Antonia. Here's a photo of them in fancy dress pretending it's the 1790s:
Louis is the latest in a long line of Kings descended from the Kings of France, who colonised the island in the late 1600s. They're stuck firmly in the past, determined to hold onto the traditional system where the King has absolute authority over the whole country, ruling with the help of an elite class of land owning aristocrats.
They rule from the Palais district of New Lyon, Guadelique's bustling capital. Your printing press is not far away, right in the heart of New Lyon's old town, the Ville Coloniale.
New Lyon is where most of the country's immigrant population live, including a lot of Guatelicans. Remember Guatelica? Ever since the founding of Guadelique, Guatelica has been its rival. Both nations have gone through periods of prosperity and poverty, and several bloody wars.
That means there's a lot of distrust of Guatelicans in Guadelique, both on the street - but also in the palace. Maria Antonia is herself a Guatelican, and for that reason many people suspect her of secretly working to undermine Guadelique.
The most recent conflict, 50 years ago, set the borders where they are today, but tension on the border has been rising in recent times. That's why soldier Corporal Jean Reed has (along with many other Guadeliquan troops) been sent to the border barracks town of Saint Philippe. He's lost trust with the military leadership, so he'll offer up his services to you as a war correspondent and whistleblower.
Saint Philippe is adjacent to the remote rural region of Izapaya. This region is home to a large population of Izapayan people, who have lived on this island since long before the arrival of the European colonisers. They're treated as a lesser class of citizen by Guadeliquan law, so there's a lot of poverty in the region, and not a lot of love for the King. But will the factions challenging the King's authority take up their cause?
Guadelique's times of prosperity were largely down to its two biggest exports: the first of which is coffee, which is grown in the northern district of Oramer and exported through Port Lagarde.
The other main export is Bauxite, which is mined from the mountains around industrial city Bauxville. This is a smog-choked, densely-packed hellhole where soot-covered workers toil for long hours and inadequate pay. It's not surprising that this a stronghold of the Revolutionaries.
Bauxite and other minerals mined from here are exported from the Port district of nearby New Lyon.
But as Bauxite production collapses, and tensions with Guatelica hurt coffee exports, the country's economy is in freefall. Combined with several years of poor harvests, and the fact that most farmland has been given over to profit-making coffee plantations owned by the aristocrat classes, a crisis has formed which threatens the King's regime more than any foreign army: hunger.
It's not all grim in Guadelique though! Over in Oppedette there's a bustling tourist industry where Guadelique's upper classes and tourists from the US come to enjoy the white sand beaches, brand new hotels, and locally produced Bicardie Rum.
King Louis has for a long time relied on his Secret Police for keeping Guadelique under his control, even as reform and democracy spreads around the Caribbean region.
The Secret Police are infamously brutal - arresting those who speak out against the King, monitoring citizens, and even carrying out extrajudicial executions in their feared prison, the Bastion. It's the Secret Police who will pay you a visit if you break censorship laws, so watch out.
The Royalists who support Louis are generally in favour of the secret police. They want to keep the traditional structure of Guadelique intact, and are worried about the damage that change could bring. A lot of Royalists are aristocrats who directly benefit from the current system, but many more are ordinary people who feel loyalty to the King, even if they sometimes feel his advisors are leading him astray.
You can hire Armand de Villiers as a journalist - he's an ex civil servant, a Royalist who supports the King and has many contacts in government, but isn't afraid to criticise what he sees as grave errors. If you want to get a view inside the Royalist machine, make sure to have him on your staff.
Of course, many people want change. A number of prominent Aristocrats and educated members of the Bourgeoisie have formed the Liberals. Their leader is the popular ex-general the Marquis de Lafayette, and their goal - at the start of the game, anyway - is to work with the king to bring reform and democracy to Guadelique. They despise the authoritarian secret police.
The Liberals are rapidly gaining in popularity as the King's mismanagement of the crisis grows. But these are not radicals - they don't want to tear down the monarchy, just bring it into the 20th century.
But there's a new faction forming, predominantly among the working classes of Bauxville and the Port District of New Lyon and intellectuals who've travelled abroad and got big ideas from elsewhere. These are the Revolutionaries, who think the Liberals just want to replace one unfair system with another, and that real change can only come from overthrowing the King and building a country that can serve ordinary people.
The Revolutionaries don't have access to the usual levers of power - money, influence in government - so some of them are starting to use more extreme methods to achieve the change they want. There's rumours of assassinations of secret police officers, bank heists, rabble rousing speeches in the factories...
One of the journalists you can hire, Camille Desmoulins, is sympathetic to the Revolutionaries and can give you an insider's view of their workings.
There's a lot more to Guadelique - 14 distinct regions each with their own backstory and unique demographic makeup, and a lot more journalists, sources, and characters from across this political spectrum, but hopefully this gives a flavour of the world you can inhabit and influence.
As I'm currently working on some cool upgrades to the simulation I'll have some exciting changes to show off in the next dev diary. Thanks for reading :)
PS - if you're wondering where the earlier dev diaries are, they're all on the Discord, which is also a great place to hit me up with any questions you've got on the lore of the game.