Summary
Politics is a fascinating system. Part machine, part popularity contest, and part insider trading boot camp, it has the power to transform society and take it apart in equal measure. For the morbidly curious, plenty of political simulation games offer a glimpse at how exactly the sausage is made from a whole plethora of different countries, cultural climates, and visual depictions of the inside of that figurative butcher’s abattoir.
Political simulationsdistinguish themselves from the grand strategy or nation-building genre (although they might include elements of both) by incarnating their players into precarious flesh-and-blood meatbags that are just as vulnerable to an assassin’s blade as they are tobriefcases of sweet, intoxicating dollar bills. Rather than hang above their citizens' heads in the sky, players of political simulation games are exposed to the twin tensions of corruption and death (political or otherwise) while navigating a nightmarishly complex ecosystem of checks, balances, and lobbyist lunches.
Updated July 13, 2025, by Hamza Haq:Political simulation games come in various flavors. Ranging from the traditional 4X grand strategy to hardcore survival sims to online-only web page-based titles that are underground cult classics. By their very nature, political sims are always complex, but there are varying degrees of complexity, and more isn’t always better. How granular a game becomes is both a strength and a weakness. Luckily, this genre is moderately popular, and plenty of options are suitable for different tastes.
IfFrostpunkteaches players nothing else about politics, it’s that sometimes, ideals shatter before necessity. While many people will agree that child labor is abhorrent, through the power of interactive art, they will learn to accept it as a “one-off” and then “only for emergencies” and finally something to do “when they can take it.” InFrostpunk, layers spend many hours of game time struggling to keep their generator fueled and their people housed as the weather gets colder and colder.
To survive an icy apocalypse, the player will need to occasionally bump the needle on their moral compass or risk perishing in the cold. Obviously,Frostpunkisn’t exactly emblematic of peacetime politics, nor does it attempt to simulate it. However, those who enjoy navigating crises with a box cutter covered in the frozen blood of their kindred will appreciate the “for the greater good” design behindFrostpunk’s most chilling challenges and grim political solutions.
Victoria 3takes a top-down approach to its simulation of politics as players must navigate the tension between appeasing their populations and getting their own way, lest they endanger their legitimacy and, therefore, their political capital. The game takes place during a time of political and economic transformation, the Victorian era, and as such, players have to prepare themselves for unexpected outcomes to their decisions. For example, factories might be a huge economic boost to a country, but the political clout that factory owners accrue as a result may have major disruption potential.
Favor doesn’t just come from within political parties, as players can leverage the popular support of movements. The legitimacy that democratic votes, special interest groups (clout), or a country’s ruler (president, monarch, and so on) lend also depends on the country’s setup.Victoria 3is not a pure politics simulator, as it fits more in the “grand strategy/builder” genre, but its inclusion of these systems and the run-off effects into other areas enriches the experience by demonstrating the interconnectedness of political, social, and economic factors and giving weight to every action.
Politics isn’t just about raising campaign funds, serving interests, and backstabbing. Policies can be set by individuals and the charismatic archons that influence them, asRimWorld’s “Ideology” DLC deftly demonstrates, albeit in an off-world political arena. Players can create their own “ideoligion” (or choose from presets) that allows them to customize the nitty-gritty, “invisible” policies held by ordinary people or, in RimWorld’s case, the cult policies their (ostensibly doomed) colonists.
From choosing who has to change their family name to deciding on the validity of vampirism or the benefits of voluntarily going blind, “Ideology” hands the player powerful political control, expanding the game’s already excellent potential for emergent storytelling. With a full spread of precepts, structures, styles, and cultures to pick from, players can mold their colonies into just about anything. Just as real-life ideologies evolve over time, so do the ideoligions ofRimWorld.
In the same way that great novels are often the basis for great movies,Twilight Struggleis based on one of the most highly-rated board games of the same name. The game has players take control of either superpower during the Cold War, either against a friend or an AI opponent. Historical events come to life as hot-blooded politics, as each round could lead to disaster or opportunity, depending on the player’s political finesse. With the world to win, it’s the US versus the USSR in the most chilling game of chicken the world has ever seen.
The interface, soundbites, and art immersively rack up the tension. Games can last an hour or weeks, and for strategy, fans will prove difficult to put down once they have the rules down, thanks to a helpful tutorial. While the single-player AI is adequate, it can be erratic (seemingly psychic or a little dopy at times), and like the board game version,Twilight Struggleis best enjoyed with a human taking the opposite side.
Modern politics can seem like a mess at times, so perhaps the best way to understand it now is to witness how it all started: during the first days of the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. The player inWe. The Revolutionis put into a judge’s chair and asked to navigate the fraught and deadly political landscape of Paris in 1794 when the heads of royalty and other figures of power were regularly rolling courtesy of the liberal use of the guillotine.
The game mixes turn-based battling with clue-finding and case-building, and each genre snippet integrates well with the other. The cases themselves are sublimely ethically ambiguous, but the head of a judge is hardly safer than any other, and the player will need to win over the people and powerful influencers if they want to keep theirs as well as contend with the opinions of their family and their own moral compass as they reach their decisions.
It’s an open secret that politics can be a dirty business. InThis Is The President, dirt is a currency that players can use to keep their opponents (and even members of their own team) compliant and quiet. The player’s goal is to amend the constitution in order to make all those past bad business boohoos go away by achieving full immunity from the law for all presidents. Political video games are always a matter of controversy, but this one is more charged than an electric chair.
Being a narrative game, there are moments of political decision-making, but the President is unambiguously a crook, and the player is asked to play accordingly. Asgames about being the President of the United States go, this one really takes the cheeseburger in terms of its cutting satire and bizarre plot twists, and it can get downright silly at times (perhaps a reflection of realpolitik today), but it may delight those political lovers with a dark disposition all the same.
As a leading member of a government freshly thrust into power after a decisive coup, the player is asked to take the crumbling remains of a fictional country in the Middle East and raise it up to glory while avoiding the wrath of the people, outside interests, and good old-fashioned border wars.Rogue State Revolutionmanages to combine elements from Sid Meier’s Civilization and foundational gameplay pillars from any good pol-sim.
Players must manage maleficent ministers while propagating propaganda and postponing poisonous policy that could spell an end to Basenji’s new era of prosperity, or they could invest 100% of the country’s national budget into inventing a time machine or constructing abipedal walking battle tankarmed with an in-built railgun and flamethrower with a presidential pilot seat.
InFrostpunk 2, the last remnants of humanity are stuck in the frozen wasteland Earth has turned into after an apocalyptic event turned the world to a snowy hellscape that, with very little in the way of resources, housing, population, and most importantly, heat.Like the originalFrostpunk,Frostpunk 2is a brutal, unforgiving city-building survival game where keeping these last members of the human race alive is all the player can really hope for.
One of the most notable ways in whichFrostpunk 2deviates from the original is through the council system. Thirty years have passed since the events of the first game, and perhaps the city-dwellers have rediscovered democracy, but they’ve implemented a council system whereby different factions of the city get a say in what laws can be implemented in the game. To get any laws passed through this council, players will have to negotiate and cajole the council members, introducing an element of political intrigue that was not there in the first game. With enough political acumen, savvy players can even convince the council to give them dictatorial powers. Quelling rebellions before they have a chance to gather steam, negotiating with neighbors, and keeping the council members pacified is all a balancing act that adds a political sim element toFrostpunk 2, making the already difficult task before the player even harder.
For the true sticklers of the real-life process, AKA political nerds, most video game simulations probably don’t cut it. But when it comes to dishing out the nitty gritty of arduous committee meetings and grueling reading sessions,Lawgivers 2gives players a chance to take part in evolving or protecting the state or country’s constitution to their heart’s content. Amend or pass bills, deal with lobbyists, take part in diplomatic missions, enable trade, wars, or trade wars; as government simulation games go, there’s a lot to contend with that others of the genre shy away from digging into.
The game is open-access but still receives regular updates from thismassively ambitious project’s (solo) developer: for example,Lawgivers 2had a sizeable update right at the end of 2023 that added options for military intervention, a country-appropriate “first past the post” system, and most impressively, multiplayer functionality. As the game continues to develop, it is exciting to see more political possibilities open up. Considering that the first game has been well-received so far, this might be the candidate to back.
Booting up any entry in theDemocracyseries seems daunting at first, with the UI blasting the player with an ungodly amount of information at once. However, once the player gets used to which screen does what and how to juggle political capital (the game’s primary resource), the game itself becomes remarkably focused and simple. Each game in the series pretty much does the same thing, but it makes sense to play the newestDemocracyentrydu jour, as each attempts to mirror the politics of the real world.
Every tweak and newly implemented idea inDemocracy 4tips one or many of the various political scales, and the results, while mostly delayed as with real-life politics, feel realistic and meaningful. Whilethe governance of the population’s healthand the health of the economy is the main gameplay loop, in-person politics is there. However, it is not as involved as other games of the same ilk, for which it loses a few points in the “best political simulation games” contest.
