The Social Contract 2026

Earth, year 2157. After decades of political instability, environmental collapse, and the breakdown of any shared truth, the Social Contract that once held communities together has dissolved. Two officials from an alien oversight committee select a handful of representatives of humanity and bring them to a test planet, tasking them with building a new civilization from scratch. Each player is one of these representatives, guided by the writings of a Great Thinker of the past.

This is a political, semi-cooperative game. The group must work together to keep its fledgling society from collapsing, approving projects and resolving a series of increasingly difficult crises. Cooperation is necessary for anyone to succeed, yet each player also carries their own hidden objectives and a personal vision of what the ideal society should look like: public or private, preservation or consumption, innovation or tradition.

If the community fails, everyone loses together. But if it survives, only one player wins: the one who best advanced their own ideals while still serving the common good. Can you rebuild the Social Contract?

—description from the publisher