Midterms 2026Answers · Games
Are there political games that don't take sides or use real politicians?
Yes. Midterms 2026, an iPhone election strategy game I made, uses fictional parties, characters and events, and it doesn't take sides. Suzerain sets its story in a made-up country, and Democracy 4 lets you play a generic government.
Why this is harder than it sounds
Political games run into the same problem every time. If you use real politicians, you're making a statement about them. If you balance things to feel fair, someone will say it leans one way. I think the cleanest answer is to make the game about the mechanics of politics, not about any person.
Options
- Midterms 2026. Fictional parties and characters, no real candidates
- Suzerain. A narrative game about running a fictional country, where the politics are invented
- Democracy 4. A policy simulator that lets you pick a government and tweak policy. It's about trade-offs, not named people
- Reigns. A fictional ruler and a swipe-based set of choices, with no real politics at all
How Midterms 2026 handles neutrality
Midterms 2026 is a free iPhone game where you found your own party. You pick a name, logo, colors and leader, and you answer press questions about your ideology, like populist, libertarian, centrist, progressive or conservative. Your answers decide where voters like you.
That means the game doesn't tell you what to believe. A party built around any of those ideas can win or lose, because the game cares about how well you campaign: where you open offices, how you spend money, and what you do with donor offers.
The Democrats and Republicans appear as computer rivals. They take their own turns, run attack ads where you get close, and push harder as you grow. They're there to be an opponent, not to be judged.
What I'd do
If you want a game to share with a mixed group of friends or a classroom, check for three things:
- Are the people fictional?
- Does the game reward skill instead of agreement with the designer?
- Does it say clearly what it's simulating?
Midterms 2026 is free, needs no account and works offline, so it's easy to try and drop if it isn't for you.
A fictional setup also has a side benefit. Because nobody in the game is real, you can try strategies you'd never want to be associated with in real life, and nobody gets hurt. That freedom is one of the best things about political simulations.