We have all been there. You are sitting comfortably on the sofa, watching the evening news, listening to politicians explain why something has gone wrong, and wondering how on earth they managed to make such a mess of things. It is tempting to believe that a little common sense, a decent pen and a willingness to listen would be enough to put everything right. Good President Simulator takes that familiar armchair frustration and turns it into a wonderfully cynical political management game, handing you a desk, a stack of legislation and a population full of people who all seem convinced they know better.
Developed by Pigeon-G, also known as Pigeon Games S.L., this first-person political satire is built around a surprisingly simple idea. You sit at your desk, welcome visitors, examine proposed laws and decide whether to sign or reject them. Every decision has consequences, and there is no magic option that keeps everybody happy. What initially sounds like an uncomplicated exercise in running a small political office gradually becomes a tangled web of competing interests, favours, grudges and questionable promises.
The game is not interested in recreating the traditional grand strategy experience, with sprawling maps, military campaigns and endless government departments. Instead, it takes a much more intimate approach, keeping almost everything centred on the desk in front of you. That decision gives the experience a distinctive personality, making the player feel less like an all-powerful leader and more like somebody who has accidentally accepted a job considerably more complicated than advertised.
There is an immediate sense of humour in the premise, but beneath the crude jokes and political absurdity lies a game about compromise. Every law benefits somebody, annoys somebody else and potentially costs you money or political support. You might begin with good intentions, but surviving long enough to achieve anything requires a willingness to make decisions that will leave somebody furious. Welcome to politics.
The Power of the Pen
The central mechanic revolves around reviewing legislation and deciding whether to approve it. Laws arrive on your desk as physical documents, and you must pick up the pen and sign to accept them. If you disagree, you can reject the proposal and crumple the paper before sending it to the bin. It is a wonderfully tactile approach to what could otherwise be a series of ordinary menu selections, giving even the simplest administrative decision a little personality.
Each proposal provides information about the factions that support or oppose it, alongside its financial consequences for both party funds and public money. This is where the strategic side begins to emerge. A law might please one group while infuriating another, and something that looks financially attractive could create political problems elsewhere. There is no universally correct answer, so you must consider which relationships matter most and how much trouble you can afford to create.
The physical act of signing is particularly fitting because it reinforces the responsibility attached to every decision. You cannot simply click through a series of policies and pretend that nothing has happened. The document is placed in front of you, the pen is in your hand, and the decision is yours. It is a small design choice, but one that helps establish the game’s identity.
Rejecting legislation is just as important as approving it. Sometimes the most sensible decision is to refuse a proposal, even if doing so damages a relationship with an influential faction. Other times, you may find yourself reluctantly signing something that goes against your instincts because the political consequences of rejection would be even worse. That constant calculation is the heart of Good President Simulator, and it gives the otherwise modest interaction system a surprising amount of weight.
Fifteen Factions and Nobody to Please
The faction system is arguably the most interesting part of the political simulation. Fifteen distinct groups have their own priorities, relationships and expectations, including socialists, capitalists, environmentalists, younger citizens, security forces, the mafia and conspiracy enthusiasts. They are not merely separate popularity bars waiting to be filled. Their relationships are interconnected, so supporting one group can damage your standing with another.
This creates an interesting balancing act because political support is not something you can build by agreeing with everybody. A decision that makes the environmentalists happy might upset business interests, while giving the security forces what they want could create resentment elsewhere. Even apparently harmless legislation can have consequences that extend beyond the faction directly affected. You are constantly weighing up who needs attention, who can be safely ignored and which relationships are becoming too dangerous to neglect.
Allowing an entire faction to fall to zero brings particularly serious consequences, as the group eventually comes to your office with an ultimatum. This prevents players from simply abandoning whichever groups they dislike. You might be tempted to concentrate on the factions that offer the greatest political advantages, but ignoring everybody else can quickly become a recipe for disaster. It is an effective way of making the political landscape feel interconnected, even though the entire experience takes place within a relatively confined setting.
The challenge is that pleasing one group can mean disappointing another, and sometimes there simply is not enough money or political goodwill to go around. This makes every proposal feel like a small negotiation, even when nobody is actually sitting across the desk from you. The game captures the frustration of trying to satisfy competing interests without pretending that there is a perfect compromise waiting to be discovered.
Tomorrow’s Newspaper Is Waiting
One of the game’s smartest features is the daily newspaper. At the end of a working day, you can read the front page to see how your decisions have been reported. The paper reflects the legislation you signed the previous day, turning your choices into a satirical account of your latest political achievements and disasters.
It is a simple idea, but it gives your decisions a welcome sense of continuity. Rather than treating every law as an isolated event, the newspaper reminds you that your actions have consequences beyond the immediate changes to faction support and finances. It also gives the game an opportunity to deliver some of its humour through headlines, allowing you to see how the public narrative surrounding your leadership is developing.
There is something particularly entertaining about reading the newspaper after a day spent making difficult decisions. You might have convinced yourself that you made a sensible compromise, only to discover that the press has interpreted events in an entirely different way. The newspaper becomes a running commentary on your performance, and its changing headlines help make each playthrough feel a little more personal.
It also encourages you to think about reputation rather than simply chasing numbers. Keeping your faction support high is important, but the public perception of your leadership matters too. If your approval rating climbs above 50 per cent, you can pursue the next office, creating a clear incentive to maintain enough support to continue your political career.
Favours, Gifts and the Price of Power
The visitors who enter your office add another layer of personality to the experience. People arrive with proposals, requests and their own explanations of why you should support them. Some bring gifts, such as cigars or envelopes, and accepting them is treated as accepting the favour attached to them. It neatly presents corruption as beginning with apparently harmless gestures rather than a dramatic criminal conspiracy.
The game makes it clear that these transactions are not always legitimate. Illegal arrangements are discussed openly, without paperwork or evidence, leaving you to decide whether the potential reward is worth the risk. This creates an entertaining contrast with the formal business of signing legislation. One moment you are carefully considering the public finances, and the next somebody is offering you something that probably should not be anywhere near a government office.
The backstory adds another uncomfortable dimension. Somebody paid your registration fee to help you get started, claiming to be a friend, but their support comes with expectations. It is a clever starting point because it immediately establishes that your political career has not been built entirely on goodwill or personal ambition. There are people behind the scenes who expect something in return, and you have to decide how far you are prepared to go to keep them satisfied.
This is where the satire works particularly well. Good President Simulator does not need elaborate political speeches or lengthy cinematic scenes to communicate its cynicism. A visitor, an envelope and a questionable request can say plenty about the world you have entered. The humour is crude and occasionally deliberately uncomfortable, but that is clearly part of the game’s identity.
From Town Hall to the Presidential Office
Progression unfolds across four stages, moving from town to city, then region and finally country. Each step brings greater political responsibility, giving the overall journey a clear sense of escalation. You are not simply repeating the same career indefinitely, but gradually working towards a position where your decisions affect a much wider population.
The ambition is supported by 21 different endings. Winning national elections is one possible outcome, but losing, being removed from office, or ending up somewhere considerably worse are also possibilities. The ending gallery gives players a reason to explore different approaches, particularly if their first attempt at political survival ends in spectacular failure.
This variety is important because it encourages experimentation. A cautious leader might focus on keeping public finances stable and maintaining broad faction support, while a more reckless player could chase short-term advantages and see how long the resulting political mess remains manageable. The possibility of failure gives decisions a little more bite, because you are not guaranteed a happy ending simply for reaching the final stage.
The physical office also becomes part of the experience. Your desk contains familiar objects such as a pen, stamp, lamp, bell and waste bin, while visitors arrive through the door with their latest demands. Even the act of switching off the lamp at the end of the day helps establish a routine. It is a small detail, but it gives the game a strangely satisfying sense of closure after a particularly troublesome session.
The waste bin, keeping score of your crumpled paperwork, is another amusing touch. It is exactly the sort of unnecessary little detail that gives a satirical game its character. Rather than filling the screen with complicated statistics, the developers have found ways to make the physical environment part of the joke.
Presentation, Controls and Personality
Visually, Good President Simulator keeps things relatively simple, focusing on the office and the documents that arrive on your desk. This is not a game built around impressive scenery or elaborate character animation. Its presentation is functional, with the first-person perspective allowing you to interact directly with the objects around you. That restrained approach suits the premise, as the desk is effectively the main stage on which your political career unfolds.
The DualSense controller is supported, allowing players to interact with the game’s various objects using a traditional console controller. This is particularly important for a game that relies so heavily on physical actions such as picking up documents, signing laws and handling gifts. The interface needs to make these activities comfortable rather than turning every small interaction into a chore, and the straightforward desk-based structure gives it a clear foundation.
Audio and dialogue take a deliberately unconventional approach. There is no full voice acting, with text accompanied by spoken-sounding babble rather than conventional character performances. Some players may find this less immersive than a fully voiced political adventure, but it fits the deliberately odd atmosphere. The writing, strong language and crude humour do much of the work in establishing the game’s tone.
The biggest potential barrier is the amount of reading involved. Understanding the factions, financial consequences and individual proposals requires players to pay attention to the information presented. Those expecting a fast-moving political action game may find the pace rather slow, particularly when several decisions need to be considered in succession. However, the text-heavy approach is also central to the experience, and simplifying it too much would risk removing much of the strategic consideration.
The Final Verdict
Good President Simulator is a wonderfully unusual political satire that finds plenty of entertainment in the simple act of sitting behind a desk and making decisions that somebody, somewhere, is going to hate. Its signature-based legislative system gives the gameplay a tactile identity, while the fifteen interconnected factions create a constant balancing act between public money, party finances and political support. The newspaper, questionable gifts and 21 possible endings add personality and replay value, ensuring the experience is about more than simply signing whichever laws look most appealing.
Its limited setting and text-heavy structure will not suit everybody, and players looking for traditional grand strategy or a realistic government simulator may be surprised by how confined the experience feels. Yet that is also part of its charm. By keeping the action centred on one office, Pigeon-G has created a more personal and amusing take on political responsibility, where even a simple signature can have consequences that follow you into the next morning.
There is a genuine appeal in discovering just how long you can keep everybody reasonably satisfied before the whole arrangement begins to collapse. You might start with noble intentions, but the demands of fifteen factions, the occasional envelope and the looming threat of another election have a habit of changing your priorities. It is funny, cynical and occasionally rather uncomfortable, but it understands exactly what sort of political fantasy it wants to deliver.
For anyone who enjoys management games with a strong satirical streak, Good President Simulator is well worth a look. Just remember that the people who helped pay for your campaign will expect something in return, and tomorrow’s newspaper is already waiting to tell everybody what you did.
