Game Review: The Election Game (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

As the UK is heading towards a General Election in the next month or so, at the time of writing this review, politics is once again front and centre in the public eye and in the news.  Whatever your political persuasion, or not as the case may be, there have always been games based on elections.  In fact, The Election Game itself is a re-release of a 1983 game released by Mr Chip Software called Westminster, perhaps much better named considering that is the part of London where the Houses of Parliament resides and indeed may have tied up more nicely with the 1983 General Election at the time.  For some reason for this re-release, Mastertronic decided to charge £2.99 instead of the normal £1.99 at the time.

Choose Your Party

The game loads with a Commodore BASIC graphic representation of Westminster, and asks if you would like to read the rules.  Reading those shows the game still refers to itself as Westminster, so only the title page was changed for the re-release.   Once those have been read, you can commence the game.  You can choose from Conservative, Labour, Liberal or Independents, pressing RETURN means the computer is the player, and entering a name means you control that party.  In theory, four players could all play but this may prove difficult to find three friends who would be that interested.  Once all four parties have been selected, you can choose the number of rounds of canvassing for votes.  The rules and manual recommend 120 rounds (which would take a fair while) and realistically to make any difference to the gameplay, 30-40 would be a minimum.

Canvassing

The canvassing rounds start and effectively you move around the 60 constituencies / seats (yes, only 60, how unrealistic) – and each party starts off with 15 seats.  At each constituency you can see the opinion polls, where all the computer-controlled parties have a round number of votes, but yours is seemingly random.  You input how much of your budget you want to spend on canvassing voters to gain votes, and if that is enough to gain votes elsewhere, you will be informed.

During these canvassing rounds, you will randomly get some news headlines if you have gained a bit of luck, or your party office will donate some more funding to you to spend on more canvassing (at the expense of losing one canvassing round).  According to the rules, spending more should gain more votes,  but in practice this does not always work, it seems very random. You will also see how many seats you have and how many are marginal (where you may be able to gain one) and if the opinion polls show you are close behind, spending enough may turn the seat over to you, or it may not, such is the almost random nature.

I Wanna Be Elected

The constant canvassing becomes tedious very quickly, and you will wish that you had picked less rounds.  It almost becomes the case that entering any random number of money could be used to influence the outcome, with the occasional splurge of cash when a constituency is quite low.  On occasion you will see an opinion poll forecast the state of the parties with a checkered effect to the right indicating the winning line for a majority, and often early on, there is no movement, so seems pointless.  Later, with multiple canvassing rounds this can change a little.

On rare occasions you can choose to move to a constituency where the opinion poll shows the vote could be marginal, so you can head there from a selection and choose.  Of course, it makes sense if you can go to somewhere that you are slightly below someone in the lead, but sometimes it gives you a choice of the ones you are winning comfortably, which seems somewhat more random, as does the donations to your party funds.  So, you do need to at least think before you overspend and then run out of influence.

The Final Countdown

At the end of the canvassing, and provided you do not choose more rounds, some BASIC graphics show the polling stations opening and closing, with a representation of the count taking place.  These are poorly drawn even for PETSCII characters, and offer no real incentive to get excited about the results – with the lack of any sound being another factor.   Once the count has taken place you will see which party got the most seats, and whether that was enough to be a majority or not.  You can see each constituency result and a final graph, but that just adds yet more tedium.

Final Thoughts

Playing The Election Game for the number of rounds of canvassing needed to make the game have some influence over the result means effectively it is a tedious and dull exercise.  It feels like a poorly made board game idea converted over to a computer format where it feels even more dull and lifeless, with basic graphics, no sound and dull and repetitive gameplay throughout.  You will feel relieved if you manage to gain power, in that you will not have to play the game again.  You would have felt short changed for £1.99, never mind the extra pound being charged here, and the awful nature of how poorly executed the game is really does hammer home what a waste of money this game is.

The Candidate

The story of Westminster does not just go into the re-release as The Election Game either.  The game was amended slightly for the American market, and released on disk as The Candidate (ICD 0035.)   As such, there are only minor differences in the way that the game plays.  You now must be one of four potential candidates (instead of one of four parties), to be the party nominee to become President of the United States of America once the states’ decisions have taken place. In addition, there are now fifty-two states to contend, which is also historically inaccurate, as that country has had fifty states officially recognised since the late 1950s.  And bearing in mind there were sixty constituencies in The Election Game, that shows ignorance of the different electoral systems in place not adjusting for the correct number, and thus makes it a lazy port.

Canvassing in Kansas

Whilst the instructions do appear separate before the loading screen showing a map of the United States, the gameplay is the same.  You are still attempting to canvas for votes, you can have random events happen such as extra money being donated by central office, or taking part in a television interview, losing votes locally and so on, with the opinion poll showing the candidates instead of the parties. In addition, those opinion polls are shown as a semi three-dimensional bar chart vertically instead of horizontally, but effectively does the same task.  The polls appear usually close to the end of the canvassing, where you are at least given the option to extend the rounds should you need to, although tedium may well have set in at that point.

Delight in Delaware

When the polling stations have closed (without the graphics showing that they have closed, just the voting started being shown), instead of the results being shown overall, the same semi three-dimensional bar chart grows as each individual state result is declared with the number of votes.  However, you cannot speed this process up whatsoever, meaning you will need sit patiently and wait for all the counts to take place and scroll across the screen.  Once that has happened a winner will be declared, normally due to good publicity, and a breakdown of each state result and the majority that a candidate won or lost that state is shown.

Overall, although there are a couple of minor improvements, the main game itself is just a re-skin of The Election Game (and Westminster prior) with the same flaws.  The lack of accuracy does also not lend itself well either and the fact you must sit through the results and watch that bar chart draw is like swimming through treacle.  It is still just as flawed as The Election Game, and even if you are a fan of politics, my advice would be to steer well clear.

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