Three reviews landed this week. Two of them were about sound and money. Both were right, and both are fixed.
The sound was built from the wrong material
All 26 effects were made from three waveforms — square, triangle and noise. That is the definition of chiptune, and it is why the game sounded like an 8-bit machine.
They are now built from the resonance of struck objects. Wood rings at 1 : 2.76 : 5.40 — the real mode ratios of a free bar. Bells, brass and metal each have their own. Paper, applause and jeering can't be synthesised at all (hundreds of tiny overlapping events read as radio static), so those are real recordings now.
The typewriter tick fires fourteen times a second and every single one was the same waveform. It came out as a machine gun. Each keystroke is slightly different now.
The crackle in the music
The tool that bakes the loops was clipping them. 21 of 44 tracks were distorted at the seam — audible once every 25 seconds, forever. All 44 have been rebaked. Zero clipped samples.
Rising in rank made you poorer
The salary never covered the cost of living at any tier, and the gap widened as you climbed. As president you were losing money every quarter. There was no way to close it except corruption.
That was not the intention. From the assembly onward, the salary now covers a normal life. The temptation is still there; the requirement is gone.
Backgrounds that could only take day labour
The job ladder checked one skill: expertise. A journalist with oratory 25 could not ghostwrite. A business founder with negotiation 25 could not consult. Those backgrounds spent 76% of a quarter's action points just paying for food — leaving 24% for politics.
Two new jobs read the skills you actually have: Op-ed column (oratory) and Corporate advisory (negotiation). Every background now keeps at least 62% of the quarter for politics.
Also
Rough English cleaned up, including a stray "carriage" on the very first card you read.
To everyone who left a review: all three of you were accurate. The one that read the numbers and concluded the design forces corruption was right — I checked the arithmetic and it did. Keep telling me in the Discussions; this is what happens to it.