Kowanche

KOWANCHE

Maintain Equality. Prevent Chaos.

KOWANCHE. Maintain Equality. Prevent Chaos is a retro-style resource management game about a fictional island state governed by the doctrine of Total Organized Equality.

Kowanche is a dystopia I first imagined in my teenage years, around 1997. It is a diamond-shaped island state in Southeast Asia: isolated, highly organized, and built around the ideal of the "Sparkling Order". Its citizens wear plain, white, standardized uniforms as symbols of cleanliness, discipline and equality. Its cities are geometric, its public spaces are spotless and symmetrical, and its institutions try to remove every visible sign of difference from everyday life.

In Kowanche, money does not exist. Private wealth, social distinction and uncontrolled individual ambition are all seen as sources of disorder. The state believes that perfect order is the only possible foundation of perfect equality. Everything is planned: food, labour, industry, movement, architecture, education, and even the approved form of technological progress.

The player takes the role of Nowar Chan, Head of State and Director of the Kowanche Central Headquarters in K1A City. Nowar Chan does not see himself as a tyrant, but as the guardian of a fragile system. His task is to maintain equality, prevent chaos, and decide whether the Sparkling Order can survive a carefully controlled opening toward the outside world.

A small but important symbol of this opening is the white Kowanche Car: a single standardized state automobile, exported in limited quantities. It is not a luxury product, but an object of order — one model, one colour, one approved design. Foreign interest in this car may help Kowanche open a narrow window to the world, especially toward Sirville, but every opening also brings risk.

(Kowanche is my dystopia and Sirville is my utopia. The two states have a good relationship with each other: opposites attract.)

Your task is to guide Kowanche through an eight-year cycle. Each year you must allocate labour to agriculture, industry and order, decide how strongly to support equality, and choose the level of controlled opening. The country can survive only if food, social discipline, industrial development, equality and fatigue remain in balance.

The game was inspired by KING / Govern Your Own Island, also known as Pollution Game, by James A. Storer (the legendary Jim Storer). 

Source of Mr. Storer's masterpiece is Digital's 101 BASIC Computer Games, 1975.

This is not a direct remake and does not follow the original mechanics exactly. It is a respectful tribute and a fictional reinterpretation of the early BASIC resource-management tradition.

How to play

Each year, assign labour units to:

• Agriculture – produces food and helps the population survive.
• Industry – increases long-term capacity and supports the export of the white Kowanche Car.
• Order – maintains social organization and protects equality.
• Equality Allocation – supports the official ideal of full equality.
• Controlled Opening – allows limited contact with the outside world, but too much openness may bring difference, fatigue and chaos.

Unexpected events may occur: food aid from East Atlantis, foreign orders for white Kowanche Cars, laboratory population programs, metro accidents, diplomatic incidents, or international recognition.

Survive eight years without letting equality collapse, chaos enter K1A, the population fall too far, or the system exhaust itself.

After a successful cycle, you may continue for another eight years from the existing state of Kowanche — history does not reset.

Created by

Gábor Képes

AI assistance

Designed and developed with the assistance of ChatGPT. Images and game concept elements were created and refined in collaboration with AI tools.

License

This game is released as a free, non-commercial cultural and educational project. Please credit Gábor Képes if you share, discuss or reuse it. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0.