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.”
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