Democracy Manifest

This was the second of a series of three game-jams undertaken as part of my 4th year at university. In this, we were tasked with making a game that explained how an alternative voting system worked, without using any complex maths.

We settled on centring our project on the Electoral College system and created our game Democracy Manifest.

The game focused on players taking turns to place a token on one of 12 hexes, each worth different amounts of points. At the end of each round, players calculate how many points they have accrued with the player with most points gaining one victory point. In instances of a tie, players play a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide the winner for that round (true democracy in action). Players will also have several action cards that they can play at any time, allowing them to move or swap tokens, counter other players action cards or to automatically win a tiebreaker. This lead to a very compelling gameplay experience where players are constantly strategizing and selectively targeting hexes worth more points, or that are uncontested. This game is genuinely worth downloading from the itch page and giving it a try. It was actually extremely good fun!