Best Political Sim Games on Steam
Simulations of elections, governments, policy decisions, diplomacy, or political systems.
Browse all Political Sim →
1Crusader Kings II - Explore one of the defining periods in world history in an experience crafted by the masters of Grand Strategy.
Feb 14, 2012
In this game, you can…
- use intrigue to install your brother as an anti-pope, go to war with the pope, and make your brother the official pope for Catholics
- seduce queens and empresses across multiple realms, then spread bastards so widely that another player can end up as your kid
- build a secret Odin cult, drag your spouse into it, get in a tavern brawl while disguised, then die crusading for Christianity while secretly pagan
- start as a powerful emperor or a lowly count in 1066–1453, and if you die without a viable heir, your run just ends
- lose one throne in a succession war, then inherit a completely different kingdom through your family line
- marry into a rival dynasty, line up your heir to inherit, and watch two kingdoms unify automatically when the right person dies
- plot a duke's murder with help from his spouse, spark the civil war you wanted, and steer the chaos toward your firstborn inheriting
- murder the king of France, marry his widow, and have a son with her who gains the claim you need to take the throne
- raid across Europe from a tiny island ruler, kill hundreds of thousands, hoard mercenaries and gold, then trigger a coalition dogpile that wipes your empire in two years
2WorldBox - God Simulator - WorldBox is the ULTIMATE god simulator and sandbox game. A petri dish for your fantasy civilizations. Create your own world or destroy it using many powers. Watch civilizations grow, form kingdoms, colonize new lands, sail to far continents, wars to ignite, empires to fall and towns to burn!
Dec 2, 2021
In this game, you can…
- give grasshoppers sapience with monoliths, watch them churn through a hundred kingdoms in a year, then somehow invent agriculture and windmills.
- curse the world so every death leaves a wandering wraith haunting the land for the rest of history.
- drop a landlocked orc tribe into a mountain bowl and watch them still research boats and set up maritime trade routes.
- watch cats become a shoreline empire so influential that other species start naming their children and cities in catlike words.
- build a wall between two civilizations, fast-forward time, then smash it down and trigger instant mass slaughter.
- give a single person immortality and every trait, make them king, and watch them conquer a 78x53 landmass while surviving plagues and gods.
- edit the genes of an entire species at once, then watch them develop their own building style and start conquering other civilizations.
3Beholder - You’re a state-installed landlord in a totalitarian country. Place listening devices, steal and sneak into your tenants’ apartments. Use what you uncovered to report anyone capable of plotting against the state. You MUST! But WILL you?
Nov 9, 2016
In this game, you can…
- plant illegal items in someone's home, report them, and watch them get dragged out in handcuffs.
- turn petty new laws into leverage by catching people with apples, books, jeans, or even crying in public.
- bribe a doctor with a prostitute for your daughter's medicine, then arrest him for reading a medical book.
- install surveillance cameras and use a master key to enter every apartment once tenants leave.
- peek through keyholes, search bedrooms, and use what you find to blackmail people the same day they move in.
- fake crimes when you can't find any by fabricating reports, planting evidence, and extorting tenants to survive.
- help dissidents on the side, sell state secrets to spies, and even smuggle people out using a cargo ship contact.
4Victoria II - Carefully guide your nation from the era of absolute monarchies in the early 19th century, through expansion and colonization, to finally become a truly great power by the dawn of the 20th century. Victoria II is a grand strategy game played during the colonial era of the 19th century, where the player takes control of a country, guiding...
Aug 30, 2010
In this game, you can…
- take one small coastal province in China, then watch it snowball into owning most of China decades later.
- turn a local claim into a full great-power world war, then use the chaos to take most of India from Britain.
- fight wars that literally consume your population, leaving your economy and manpower hollowed out for years.
- lose a war on purpose, then calm the backlash by passing free healthcare until your population booms.
- release the Cherokee as an independent country and end up with a loyal ally for the rest of the game.
- force political outcomes with a navy parked off a port instead of conquering territory.
- industrialize and educate your people, then watch the same modern society erupt into constant revolts.
- run an economy on one booming industry, then have it collapse overnight when the world runs out of a single input.
5Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You - Big Brother has arrived - and it’s you. Investigate the lives of citizens to find those responsible for a series of terror attacks. Information from the internet, personal communications and private files are all accessible to you. But, be warned, the information you supply will have consequences.
Oct 27, 2016
In this game, you can…
- decide which conflicting version of events becomes the official truth, and watch authorities act on the story you chose.
- report a harmless detail in the wrong context and trigger real fallout, like government action that strains someone's relationship.
- race against time in later chapters while superiors demand specific intel, uploading the right mix of snippets as events unfold in the background.
- rifle through someone's web history, social feeds, emails, bank statements, and medical files, then drag chosen snippets into a government case file.
- turn a phone number on a social post into tapped calls, then pivot to private emails from an address you found on a website.
- find deleted social posts and have a moment of instability become usable evidence in an investigation.
- track a bomb-plot suspect from CCTV to their activist circle, then follow the trail into a deeper conspiracy as new names connect.
- withhold a suspicious-looking snippet to protect someone, then later see similar misread data used to label a person as a torturer.
- reach branching endings where who gets arrested or freed depends on what you submitted, what you hid, and what you marked as "relevant."
6Tropico 4 - The world is changing and Tropico is moving with the times - geographical powers rise and fall and the world market is dominated by new players with new demands and offers - and you, as El Presidente, face a whole new set of challenges.
Sep 1, 2011
In this game, you can…
- click any citizen to see their job, home, politics, and daily routine, then decide to reward them, bribe them, brand them, arrest them, or execute them.
- commit election fraud, cancel elections, declare martial law, and use secret police, hitmen, and "accidents" to stay in power.
- join Cold War sides, flip allegiances, build assault rifles and even a nuclear weapon, and make superpowers back off through force or diplomacy.
- start with a bare island and build it into a working country where every citizen walks around, works, prays, rests, and dies.
- rig seven factions and multiple superpowers against each other, choosing sides in disputes while pushing policies with ministers, bribes, and arrests.
- watch hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, volcanoes, and tsunamis wreck specific towns in real time while you rebuild around the damage.
- run exports through physical logistics, where teamsters haul real goods to docks and one transport bottleneck can choke the entire economy.
- turn retirees into forced labor, send children into military training, and decide what to do when immigrants become a huge majority.
7Not For Broadcast - A new political Party has won a landslide in the General Election, and for some reason the editor at the news station you work at has done a runner. Now it’s up to you, the Janitor, to take over the editing booth in this tumultuous time - will you help the government, or stand in their way?
Jan 25, 2022
In this game, you can…
- juggle camera cuts, audio, ads, and censorship while the control room overheats, shorts out, gets hit by lightning, and keeps trying to shut down.
- change someone's fate by what you play on-air, like tanking a career with repeated boo sounds or saving a life by timing an ad break.
- air a harmless-looking toy ad, then face a later news segment where the presenters react to the fallout from advertising it.
- switch live camera feeds and bleep words in real time, with no rewind, while the broadcast keeps rolling.
- keep a finger on the censor button as guests blurt swear words and political slip-ups you have to bleep on cue.
- keep the show on air while new problems stack up, from signal interference to stuffed-toy chaos to fending off a murderer mid-broadcast.
- broadcast a scandal live when a public official's hidden sex-dungeon story explodes on camera during an interview.
- rewatch the entire broadcast afterward and see everything that was happening off-camera while you were switching feeds.
- shape the country's politics by what you choose to show, making the ruling party's rise and the slide into authoritarianism play out on-air.
8Do Not Feed the Monkeys - A digital voyeur simulator where you watch strangers through surveillance cameras. Invade their privacy and witness their most intimate moments, but don’t interact with the subjects – anything could happen if you dare feed the monkeys!
Oct 23, 2018
In this game, you can…
- solve a real-time emergency by figuring out how to free a man trapped in an elevator before he dies of thirst.
- tell Hitler you're a big fan and accidentally start World War III.
- listen in, jot down names and numbers, then use the in-game computer to email, call, or message the people you're watching.
- spy on strangers through hidden cameras and piece together their lives from what you overhear.
- use gathered dirt to blackmail, extort, expose, or otherwise steer a stranger's fate for cash or favors.
- discover a late-night gas-station regular is a wanted criminal, then choose to blackmail them, report them, or let them go.
- get interrupted mid-stakeout by surprise door knocks—landlady, neighbors, callers—and decide whether to answer or miss what happens on-camera.
- go from a few feeds to a sprawling grid of cameras, juggling multiple unfolding stories that demand attention at once.
9Suzerain - Assume the role of President Anton Rayne and guide the nation of Sordland. Amidst brewing international conflicts, need for reform, deep-seated corruption, and economic recession, you must make the decisions in this political drama. How will you lead?
Dec 4, 2020
In this game, you can…
- reform the country successfully, then have one seemingly minor phone call flip your fate into dying in prison.
- rewrite the constitution and squeak it through by a single vote.
- watch your spouse get seduced by a foreign president at a state party while your administration falls apart around you.
- pass sweeping democratic reforms, then watch half your cabinet resign as a neighboring country declares war.
- build the country back from recession, modernize highways and an airport, then end up captured and executed after losing an invasion.
- fund women's and minority rights, trigger riots, and get couped by the military anyway.
- seize power into a dictatorship, crush rival parties, and then face dam seizures, riots, and a border crisis that can spiral into war.
- get betrayed inside your own party and pushed out of power even after landing major reforms.
10Ages of Conflict: World War Simulator - Ages of Conflict is a versatile Map Simulation game where you create and observe custom AI nations battle it out across an infinite number of worlds. Paint beautiful maps and scenarios, and command nations to change history into your liking!
Feb 17, 2023
In this game, you can…
- create a map, spawn nations, and watch alliances, wars, puppets, revolts, and breakaway states rewrite history for thousands of years.
- plant two rival nations inside the U.S., force a civil war, watch ten cities revolt, and have a third faction win the election after both sides collapse.
- create a fantasy continent or even a map shaped like a house or a human body, then watch nations fight across it like a living diorama.
- paint borders and cities, then watch captured territory rise up and redraw the map as borders jitter and expand pixel-by-pixel.
- load or build scenarios like the Cold War or Napoleonic Wars, then let the AI rewrite them with betrayals, alliances, and conquests.
- edit the world like a sandbox god: move capitals, spawn cities, change borders, and force unstable situations just to see what happens.
- set wars to "winner takes all," then watch nations expand, collapse, and snap into clean end states instead of endless stalemates.
- run an unscripted timeline where China migrates to Kazakhstan, Canada splits, Botswana conquers Cameroon, and the U.S. dies and respawns multiple times.
