I really don't think Pals are a dogwhistle for humans. Its just a monster collection game where you can make the monsters do stuff. Its legitimately not that deep. Its not like a game is saying slavery is good or anything. Like sure, you can be mean to the digital puppets if you want, but really a lot of stuff is just head cannon. Are they working for you because they are scared or because they live in some communist utopia and work as a choice? Up to you. Really I think its just a way to put them to use for more than just combat. Plus it means you can focus on tasks you find fun instead of some of the busy work of survival games. Seriously, every game has things like this. You can take any idea and if you intentionally read it in a negative light that will be what it looks like. Does pokemon promote dog fighting? Ofcourse not. Even if it really is just digital dogfight simulator. Does Disco Elysium promote drug use because drugs have useful effects in it? Does Skyrim promote capital punishment as a good thing because guards will try to kill you for committing crimes and you can kill bandits for the government? Irl crime is caused by disenfranchisement of the poor, is Skyrim proposing we kill them all? No. Skyrim wanted an easy low level enemy you could deal with to learn the game and make some early money. In fact, any game that involves killing anything can be construed in such a way if you like. Ofcourse this isn't to say games can't carry messages, but I don't think this one really does. I think the devs just saw they could do some edgy marketing and went for it.

Most of those are quite business as usual for capitalism though. Calling it fascist while good for drawing a parallel isn't entirely true. Its peak capitalist settler colonialism which is pretty close but not entirely fascist. Communist parties are still legal, people still have some civil protections (not many, but far more than you'd have in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy). The US is basically diet fascist. Not quite fully there, but doing as much as it can to get close to it.

Like I said, if the left actually got its shit together then the US would happily fully implement fascism but really that is the only reason it hasn't fully done so.

About as fascist as any other capitalist nation. Which is to say if there was any threat to the Russian bourgeois by their working class it would be. Probably the only reason the US isn't full fascist yet is because leftism is so dead in this country that the capitalist class doesn't need to worry about such things.

Reactionary peasantry strikes again. People wonder why Deng had to break up the peasantry's power in China, this is it. This shit right here is why he needed to do things like dismantling the old commune system and ending the iron rice bowl. If he didn't, reactionary trash like this would've taken over China just like the USSR. Gorbachev, Kruschev, and Yeltsin all came from peasant backgrounds. Its not a coincidence that some of the worst politicians in Soviet history rose from that class. He saw the peasantry's rising power and dissolved that class, making them into proletarians.

Damn, I thought Cali was supposed to have better public education than the rest of the country. No water, no air, and no education? Surprised people still live there at this point.

Really fun game. I'm surprised though, I raised the entire world to a high standard of living, fixed climate change and ecological issues, even raised happiness to max level and it still said I failed in making the world better when I guarantee it was. Regardless its a very fun game, thanks for the recommendation.