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With Johor’s state election dominating headlines this week, there’s never been a better time to indulge your inner politician. These games let you take the driver’s seat: build coalitions, court voters, pass policies, or go down a darker route. From narrative-driven political dramas to full-blown nation sims, here are some games where you decide whether it’s democracy or dictatorship.
1. Politiko: The Card Game of Malaysian Politics | Card game
Politiko: The Card Game of Malaysian Politics puts 2 to 6 players in charge of a Malaysian political party, competing to be the first to collect enough “Voter Cards” to win. Each of the 10 playable parties has its own strengths and quirks, and voters are split into distinct groups reflecting Malaysia’s racial demographics, forcing players to tailor their strategies to win over different blocs.
The real chaos comes from the “Scheme Cards,” which let you bribe, backstab, or manipulate opponents. The game openly pokes fun at recognizable tropes and tactics from actual Malaysian campaigns. The Politiko game app was available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, but it seems to have been taken down.
2. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood | PC & Nintendo Switch
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood casts you as Fortuna, a witch exiled to a floating asteroid after her tarot cards predicted her own coven’s downfall. Alone in space, she summons a Behemoth companion who helps her craft an entirely new tarot deck. Players get to design and illustrate card by card. As word spreads, witches and other characters begin seeking you out for readings, and your choices during those sessions quietly shape the story around you.
Further into the game, you’re pulled back into coven politics: you can run for the position of High Priestess and choose whether to steer witchkind and humanity toward a better future, or let it all fall apart. The game’s replayability is also high, since your custom-designed cards don’t give the same reading twice. This means every playthrough and every session with a character can unfold differently.
3. Tropico series | PC, Mac, Switch, Xbox, PS5
In the Tropico games, you run a Caribbean island nation as El Presidente, guiding the nation from the colonial era through the modern day. You’ll build and manage the economy, including managing sugar plantations, mining, tourism, and manufacturing, while balancing the demands of competing factions like communists, capitalists, militarists, and religious groups.
Elections are part of the game, and this is where you can choose to be a benevolent ruler or an outright dictator. You can rig the elections and lean into propaganda, or do it the right way with genuine public works and social programs.
4. Political Animals | PC, Mac
Political Animals is a turn-based election strategy game set in a satirical world of corrupt crocodiles and idealistic mice, where you control a candidate and a small team of staff campaigning district by district. Each turn, you spend limited “logistics” points moving your team around the map to court undecided voters. You can do this by raising funds from wealthy patrons, holding grassroots rallies, or handing out gifts to sway influential figures.
Your staff choices matter too, since each type brings a unique skill: lawyers can bury scandals, preachers energize crowds, and thuggish “pigs” play dirtier games entirely. Along the way, you’ll face real-world-inspired scandals and moral dilemmas that test how far you’re willing to bend your principles just to win.
5. Democracy 3 (PC, Mac) and Democracy 4 (PC, Xbox)
In Democracy 3 and its sequel Democracy 4, you play as the leader of a nation, governing entirely through policy decisions rather than direct control. You’ll set taxes, welfare programs, environmental regulations, and hundreds of other policies, each one visualized on an interconnected web showing how it ripples out to affect crime, the economy, public health, and more.
Your choices will either please or alienate different voter groups. If you cut taxes, capitalists will love you while the socialists fume. If you tighten environmental laws, the greens celebrate while industrialists revolt. Push too hard in one direction, and you risk assassination attempts, protests, or a swift ousting at the ballot box, making it a genuinely tense simulation of just how hard it is to please everyone at once.
6. Not For Broadcast | PC, PS4 & 5, Xbox
In Not for Broadcast, you play Alex Winston, a janitor who is unexpectedly thrust into the vision mixer’s chair at the National Nightly News after a landslide election brings a radical new political party to power. Using a live control desk, you switch between camera feeds in real time, censor profanity, queue up ads, and decide how to frame the news. As the country slides toward authoritarianism over the following years, your choices determine whether you quietly go along with government propaganda or find subtle ways to push back.
7. Yes, Your Grace | PC, Mac, Switch, Xbox
In Yes, Your Grace, you play King Eryk, ruler of the fictional medieval kingdom of Davern, managing everything week by week from a pixel-art throne room. Each round, petitioners like peasants, lords, bankers, and stranger visitors, who are touched by Slavic-folklore magic, line up with requests, and you decide who gets your limited gold, supplies, or soldiers. You’re also juggling your family’s fate, hiring generals, witches, and hunters, and preparing your kingdom for an impending war with a rival nation. Every choice shapes both your kingdom’s survival and the personal cost to the people you rule.
8. Democratic Socialism Simulator | PC, Mac, Apple App Store, Google Play Store
In Democratic Socialism Simulator, you play as the first socialist president of the United States with opinionated anthropomorphic animal advisors. You’re shown a card and swipe left or right to accept or reject reforms, each choice nudging gauges like public support, the budget, congressional control, and carbon emissions. You’ll be sifting through hundreds of real-world-inspired policy proposals on taxation, healthcare, climate, and defense, while keeping an eye on a shifty defense secretary who keeps trying to sneak dubious budget items past you. The challenge is balancing radical reform against practical survival, or the people might just turn on you.
9. Sovereign Tower | PC
Sovereign Tower is an upcoming Arthurian-inspired “Round Table management RPG” from French studio Wild Wits, where you play the newly appointed Sovereign of a magical tower. Each morning, you hear your subjects’ wild and strange problems while managing a court of eccentric, egotistical knights you can send out on quests. The issues can be anything from a stray goose to a full-blown exorcism.
Every decision shifts your standing with different factions (Merchants, Mystics, Scholars, Nobles, and the People) and your treasury, and you can expand the tower itself with new rooms for crafting and recruitment. If things go badly, a time-manipulation mechanic lets you rewind and try again, uncovering new secrets and story branches along the way.
Sovereign Tower is set to launch on PC via Steam on 6 August 2026. A demo is currently available on both Steam and itch.io if you want to try it before then.
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