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The year is 2016 and Pokémon Go has taken over the world. People are wandering for miles on end, disrupting concerts, and even slamming into poles in their attempts to capture fantastical cartoon creatures.
Ten years later, a new generation are flocking to another Pokémon-inspired game. Instead of Pikachu, Charizard and Blastoise, however, players are catching and training up their local politicians in order to build their own political parties. Some MPs are even catching themselves.
Politidex is a free mobile game where players can build their own rag-tag team of cabinet members and backbenchers. Starting with their local area, players travel through constituencies teeming with wild MPs and councillors, hoping to “catch ‘em all” and become the dominant party of the UK.
Officially launched on 6 May, the game currently features more than 18,000 characters, including all 650 MPs and thousands of local councillors. A week on, players have already fought more than 45,000 battles and “caught” over 17,000 politicians.
Unlike a traditional Pokémon battle, players must “debate” a wild politician to acquire them. Players can target their opponent’s health bar, now an “approval rating”, with an arsenal of parliamentary manoeuvres: a barrage of questions at PMQs, calling for a recount, or weakening them with an embarrassing soundbite.
Senior MPs, such as Diane Abbott, hand out damage with advanced moves such as “select committee” and “policy statement”. Other politicians have moves that reference their various controversies or gaffes, including Ed Miliband’s “bacon sandwich” or Angela Rayner’s “second home”, which after Thursday’s revelation about the HMRC investigation was updated on the game to “exoneration”.
Some MPs are rare to find, such as Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage. Others unlock highly powered moves: Rachel Blake, MP for Cities of London and Westminster, can deliver a particularly nasty blow with her signature attack: “international sanctions”.
The creator of Politidex is 28-year-old game developer Fred Parry. A former contestant on Dragons Den, his full-time job is running Chicken Rush, a real-life hide and seek game he launched in 2022.
From the start of the development process, Parry wanted to avoid a gameplay that antagonised MPs or depicted violence against politicians. “I was very wary of making sure MPs weren’t scared of being in it. I wanted [battles] to be more from a political angle.”
Parry hopes Politidex will help to “humanise” politics, teaching people about the network of politicians in their local area and across the country.
“Most people are just a bit suspicious of politicians as a whole, which is really sad,” he said. “Hopefully, this serves as a way of flipping the narrative. Instead of trying to defeat politicians and bring them down, you’re actually catching them and training them up, which sounds fun.”
The inspiration for Politidex came about on April Fool’s Day. Parry said: “I was thinking: What’s the most ridiculous idea that I have, which I can feasibly build quickly? The idea was always that you could ‘catch’ your local MP. Pokémon is the game that basically made that famous, it’s the game I grew up on. And it’s not like you’re hunting them. It’s quite positive, you’re catching and training them up.”
Parry spent a month building Politidex, using AI to generate the software and game design at low costs. “I was very open and honest about using AI tools for the artwork. As a result, there’s been a bit of backlash, and I do really hear them on that. But the game would’ve never existed without those tools, so it’s a bit of a catch-22.”
The local elections made the project increasingly important. “I realised we’re gonna have people playing who don’t yet know their local MP. Over time, even I was thinking: ‘Wait. I don’t actually know the name of my local MP. I’ve forgotten it. I can’t name one councillor.’”
“I found myself learning more about where certain MPs are,” said one player, Will, a 19-year-old fine arts student in south-east London. “It could be a cool tool to get to know your local MPs or councillors, or just to generally familiarise yourself with politicians nationally.”
The response from Westminster has been “really wholesome”, according to Parry. “We’ve had MPs catching themselves, which is amazing. They’ve messaged in and said this is hilarious.”
Parry wanted to keep the gameplay “neutral with some tongue-in-cheek chaos,” particularly when encountering more divisive politicians. “Nigel Farage has a move called ’border control’, which is quite politically charged. But another move, ’milkshake’, hopefully balances it.”
He added: “I just thought, if we’re gonna be very angry in politics, very let down by politicians, quick to judge on what their motivations are – you probably do need to know their names beforehand, as a basic thing. And just have more awareness of who they are, what part they’re from, which area they’re working in.”
English (US)