The Political Machine Demo

Few things are more vicious than the battle for the presidency, especially when the race is down to the last two candidates. Since it’s not unusual for them to launch merciless smear campaigns, or make use of various other dirty tricks, the elections are usually quite exciting to watch from the outside. However, it’s definitely not as fun for those who are responsible for the results in the end.

The Political Machine is a turn-based strategy game that allows you to be the campaign manager for one of the presidential candidates and handle everything when it comes to political strategies. Your primary concern is to win states and gather votes, while everything else is possible and permitted, as long as you have the funds or the audacity to do it.

As such, there are multiple candidates you can choose from, both democrats and republicans. They are not all available from the start, since some must be unlocked by beating them in the campaign mode. Hence, whether you want to reproduce the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, or fantasize about a standoff between the great Arnold Schwarzenegger and the legendary Thomas Jefferson, almost everything is possible.

Each candidate has certain strengths and weaknesses, so not all of them are capable of handling problems the same way. Regardless of that, the most important factors are represented by stamina and funds, because you need stamina to perform any kind of action, as well as funds to buy ads or finance various other endeavors. Hence, the game takes place in turns, with each turn lasting a week in which you can do whatever the money and the stamina allow you to.

The issues you can tackle are many and serious, including abortion, the war on terror, and the usual education problems. Although the most straightforward way to do it is to create an advert in which you clearly support or object a certain issue, it is also possible to use the ad in order to say the opposite about your candidate, which diminishes his public support.

All things considered, the amount of candidates and choices available in The Political Machine should provide you with quite the lengthy gameplay experience. Hence, depending on your patience and tolerance level for politics, the game can be replayed multiple times, never with the same outcome.