You have already had one whole career. Now you go into politics.

Twenty years in courtrooms, or a newsroom, or a ministry. At forty-two, or fifty-two, you put that down and walk in with no organization, no donors and no seat. Nine backgrounds, each starting at a different age with different money and a different first line in the file.

You move three months at a time, and a whole life runs one to two hundred moves. Decide what to do this quarter, thirty years in a row, and that is your political life.

Your lifespan is hidden

There is no health bar and no year counter. The body speaks only in prose — the stairs feel longer this year; you wake twice a night now. When your health goes, no number appears. You simply get less done this quarter. Chase the presidency or see a doctor. Nobody tells you how long you can keep deferring that.

Open the map. Decide where to go.

Your room, the street, the day job, the studio, the hospital, party HQ, the chamber, the courthouse, the back alley. Every place holds work that can be done nowhere else. Pack this quarter's budget with some of the 149 things you could do, commit — and watch three months play out. They rarely play out the way you packed them. Rank opens doors: the chair's office, the rostrum, a ministry, and one day that office.

Bills are assembled, not written

Snap together a target, a means and a funding source to build thousands of bills. "Ban cross-shareholding by large corporations" and "Rent relief for small businesses" come off the same workbench, and they cost you different voters. There is no clean bill — legislating is choosing who to lose. Every act you pass becomes material for the next one, and you can be the one who repeals it.

You do not pick an ideology. It is computed.

There is no ideology slider in character creation. Your coordinates are derived from the votes you cast, the acts you passed and the things you said out loud. When yesterday's words and today's vote disagree, the gap is on the record, and a reporter brings it to you. What you were gets tallied after you die.

Every rung hands you a different object

A backbencher and a Floor Leader do not play the same board. Pin bills into twelve sitting slots (Floor Leader). Cut the nomination slate down when there are more names than seats (Party Chair). Weigh two shouting benches against each other (Speaker). Sign what you did not have time to read (Minister). Bank your speaking time and spend it on one topic (candidate). Cut the wire between two crises (President). A promotion is not a bigger number. It is a new board.

The Red File is never cleaned

The envelope you took, the case you buried, the trail you erased — all of it goes in the file. So does the good: the act you passed, the promise you kept, the person you saved. A single line from twenty years ago comes back on the front page weeks before a vote. The snowball is not something you roll. It is something that arrives.

The grilling — you wrote the questions

Sooner or later you sit down in a press room, at an ethics panel, in an ambush interview. What they open is not a script the game prepared. It is your own file. Once two lines have piled up in it, a question about those two lines appears on their sheet. When their evidence is thin, denial works. When it is thick, denial becomes perjury. Say as little as possible, take it head on, turn the frame onto them, or speak to the heart. Evade, and the next question digs the same hole again.

There is no win condition

Becoming President is not an ending. It is a rung. This game measures one thing: how you are remembered when you die. One line on a headstone and an obituary are your score. You can die a reformer, a corrupt titan, or someone nobody bothered to write about.

Invented countries. Real politics.

No real nation, no real party, no real person appears. Factions and nominations, the party line and rebel votes, whipping the floor and election night — only the rules are real.

• Three months per move — from middle age until you die, 100~200 moves a life (3~5 hours your first run)
  
• Elections slow the clock to a month, then to a single week
  
• 17 locations, 149 actions — rank opens doors
  
• Countries with different rules — a republic of party slates and prosecutors, a federation of primaries and lobbying
  
• Modular bills — thousands of laws from 160 building blocks
  
• 640+ events, 500 press questions, 22 ending archetypes
  
• 40 minigames that rotate through everyday actions (about one in four opens; office duties, your arrest vote and TV debates always do)
  
• Nine starting backgrounds, nine different lives
  
• 59 achievements
  
• Text in English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese

A note on fiction

Political Life is a work of fiction. Every character, party, organisation, newspaper and event in the game is invented, and any resemblance to real people, parties or events is coincidental. The story takes place in a fictional republic; it is not a depiction of, or a comment on, any real country, government or public figure.