PETALING JAYA, April 27 — As the 14th general election (GE14) creeps closer, Politiko’s new mobile application gives you a realistic feel of the drama.

The application — designed by Centre for Artful and Useful Recreation of (Centaur) Games in collaboration with NightMorning Games — brings a whole new gameplay compared to the card game version launched in 2013, this time it focuses more on the redelineation of electoral boundaries.

With both malapportionment and gerrymandering hot button topics in the polls, the guys behind Politiko are addressing them in the latest version.

It is arranging voters onto a hex map ― a type of map using hexagons to represent an area ― and dividing these voters into electoral seats.

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“Some seats have more voters, some seats have less,” said co-designer Zedeck Siew when met at the launch at Lit Books, Damansara yesterday.

The objective of the game is to control more seats than your opponent and the players can manipulate these seat boundaries by rearranging, breaking or creating new seats to give themselves an upper hand. 

The game lasts for eight rounds, and a player starts with four cards and draws two every round.

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The winner of the game is the person with the most seats.

“We paid attention to the advocacy that electoral-reform groups like Tindak Malaysia were doing for the redelineation issue, to make sure we understood things enough to reproduce them in the game,” he said.

A man tries out the ‘Politiko’ game during its launch at Lit Books in Petaling Jaya on April 26, 2018.
A man tries out the ‘Politiko’ game during its launch at Lit Books in Petaling Jaya on April 26, 2018.

The free mobile application is available for download on Android’s Play Store and is expected to launch on Apple’s App Store today.

As of now, the game is only available to play versus a bot, but Centaur Games have promised more extensions to the game such as local leaderboards, multiplayer mode and even in-app bonuses.

Five years ago, the response to the card game was incredible, with 1,000 copies sold in less than two months.

The game was then updated with an expanded Sabah and Sarawak pack and went international shortly afterward as India and Taiwan produced its own prototype.

Modelled on Monopoly Deal, Politiko consists of three types of cards in each deck: Party, Voter and Scheme.

The objective of the game for each player or party is to win voters and the elections.

To pull in the voters, you can use various schemes from “abolish highway tolls”, “royalty”, “increase petrol subsidy” to “build roads”. Or just trounce your opponents through “protest”, “sex scandal” or “defection”.

Co-designer Mun Kao said the new application took as much effort as producing the card version in 2013.

He said the game is a product of long sleepless nights but hoped it could make Malaysians more interested in the political scene.

“We always felt there was something short since launching the deck version in 2013, we needed something more visual and futuristic.

“This mobile application version brings a big smile to us and I hope Malaysians enjoy it and get a feel of the application ahead of the upcoming general election,” he said.

When asked about an expanded or international version, Mun Kao said he had received a few offers.

“A lot of people have called me to try and make a version for them, but it’s not like we could just do it and launch it the next day.

“We need to sit down and understand the political situation and atmosphere surrounding their nation — it’s not something we can do overnight as the game will be very misleading then,” he said.