Why does this cartoon rat game have a better economic system than "realistic" simulation games? I'm serious, this game's artstyle hides how much depth it has. It looks like some Craft the World style game, only for you to end up knee deep figuring out the best tax policies, subsidies, and overall monetary policy. The game doesn't even "cheat" with it's economy like other sim games do. You can make money by just taxing rats, but this doesn't actually increase the amount of money in circulation, which is a problem you can fix if you can bring in more money some other way. On top of that, there's two types of currency, and you can pass laws to enact price controls or subsidize certain goods and services, leading to a surprisingly in depth system that the player can engage with to try to figure out an optimal monetary strategy. Work in trading, minting your own money, raiding, taking out loans, and you end up with a game that has an economy that is quite possibly more complicated than actual trading sims like Patrician or X Universe.

That's just the economic aspect. I could gush about that for several more paragraphs, but there's other ways this game seems to outcompete similar games like Craft The World. The number of jobs, rat soldier types, various mechanics to play around, and rats being split into 3 social classes that they can move between, leads to a surprising degree of playstyle variation. On top of that the player character also has a degree of customization, with you able to forge weapons and raise stats for them, as well as order squads of rats to assist them. Attacks can even have aspect of tower defense games, with you having a large number of various traps and fortifications you can put up, as well as you having to plan around strategically placing army rats around so they can respond to enemies on their own.

This easily tops the list of games that have the appearance of being a casual game, only to suddenly smack you with immense gameplay complexity.

Very pleasantly surprised given I kind of bought this game for myself as a joke and didn't actually think I'd play it for more than an hour or two.