Weappy Studio’s crowd-funded game, This Is The Police, launched recently on Steam to rave user reviews. The title is a strategy management game that sees players in the role of a police chief voiced by Duke Nukem’s own Jon St. John, who only has 180 days to turn things around in the city before retiring.

The game sees players managing their staff, hiring in new officers, firing old officers, making power-plays for good media feedback as well as taking orders from a corrupt mayor. The game doesn’t pull any punches in the kind of hard-hitting, ambiguously moral decisions that don’t always have right answers.

The store page rolls out the description for the game succinctly enough, as players indulge in the role of police chief Jake Boyd, spending the last few months of his tenure trying to store away enough cash for his nest egg so he doesn’t become one of the bums on the streets that his officers have to escort to a shelter…

“Sometimes you’ll find yourself dodging questions in the press room, or even the occasional cross-examination in the witness box. Can you keep this pressure cooker from exploding, at least for long enough to stash away a nice retirement nest egg? “

Every decision in the game has its due consequence. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t always have good results, and sometimes doing a good thing for the betterment of the police force and your own financial well being isn’t always the right thing to do.

The trailer for the game does a fine job of maintaining brevity while covering the core tenets of gameplay. You can check it out below.

So far, the 218 reviews posted by users see a majority of them being positive… 209, in fact. The general consensus is that it’s a well-told story wrapped in a decent management simulator.

HowDoUAim summed up it as X-Com meets simulation-by-numbers…

“For those like me that have memories of Police Quest, cast those aside. This is no point-and-click adventure. If I could describe this game in a sentence, it would be: the strategic part of X-Com with the battles simulated by numbers. It’s more of a time and resource management game, but with a unique premise and good execution.”

Disco Shrew felt the game has a lot more potential than what Weappy made use of, and they’re looking forward to future updates and content, but they made it a mission in their review to point out the gravity of the decisions laid at the doorstep of your play-style will echo throughout the entirety of your playthrough, writing…

“ All of your actions do have consequences. You are forced to compromise and make choices that you would not otherwise make as the variables stack against you, stuck inbetween corrupt officials at city hall, and the murderous mob, you will have to face that peoples lives, including that of your family, your officers, and your officers families, lie in the palm of your hand.”

Sounds edgy.

You can get your hands on a digital copy of This Is The Police for $14.99 over on the Steam store. For the first week of being made available the game is 10% off the normal purchasing price.