Stardock released new candidates and made many other significant improvements today in the v1.2 update for The Political Machine 2020, a political strategy/simulation game. The PC strategy game allows players to choose a candidate and run for President against either a computer opponent or a candidate controlled by another person over the Internet.
v1.2 adds two highly requested candidates to the game: Barack Obama and John McCain. They join an already robust lineup of candidates including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and more. Each candidate has their own hand-crafted 3-D assets and custom ideology trees, “Hope and Change” and “Straight Talk Express.” Ideology trees, which are new to the 2020 version of the game, allow each candidate to play differently from one another by investing in specific issues that appeal to their voter bases.
Players have requested additional features like an “infinite points” mode and autosaves, both of which have been added for v1.2. Players can now create a custom candidate while spending as many stat points as they want – however, they won’t be available to use for multiplayer games. For players who enjoy games longer than the standard 21 weeks, autosaves have been implemented so that a fresh save will always be ready.
To help players keep track of everything occurring during their campaign, the “News Ticker” feature has been improved. Now, when a battleground state is contested or claimed, color-coordinated ticker items will pop up as a notification.
“This game takes politics and brings them to players in a way that is fun and interesting,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “We use current data to model the US and voters. The game emulates some of the unexpected things a candidate might have to deal with — natural disasters, national tragedies, economic crises — and immerses the player in it.”
The Political Machine 2020 v1.2 is now available. Get the game on Steam and Stardock for $14.99.
