POLITICAL DOMINATION is a game made in a single day with 2 friends for the Nuit Blanche exposition at the French Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI).

I was in charge of the game design, team coordination, and graphic design.

The theme of the exposition was "Empathy", and while everyone chose to praise the merits of empathy, we chose to tone down the empathy hype by offering a contemplation on how people could be used through their empathy.

The game is simple: up to 4 politicians face each other in a political arena in which they try to get elected by amassing as many followers as they can in a set amount of time.
The politicians can gather followers by making promises which can be heard in a short radius around them. 4 types of promises can be made: blue promises, yellow promises, red promises, and green promises. Each promise will attract the followers of the same color.

Of course, promises can be made to the followers of other politicians and followers are easily stolen. However, attracted followers stop showing their color, so you might have to remember what promises you and your opponents made.

From the player's perspective, there is no empathy at play. The players are just using the follower's empathy to win the game.

Just as in real politics, the controls are not explained in-game, and new-comers can be in for an unfair challenge when facing experienced adversaries.

Players left us hundreds of post-its on a board, and we were awarded "The public prize" by being the most popular exposition.