Video games are all about letting you do cool shit you couldn’t do in real life, like being a goat or being a piece of bread or showering with your dad or being a dad who is also an octopus, and now, finally, you can live your dream of being Tony Abbott immediately after the leadership spill saw him replaced by the much more well-manicured Turnbull.
Inspired by Golden Sun / Pokémon-style jRPGs, the extremely lengthily-titled Tony Abbott And The Quest For The Suppository Of Wisdom is an episodic top-down game that allows you to navigate Canberra as the embattled only-very-recently former prime minister, battling opponents in the form of “arguments”.
The game is basically a series of slightly tedious mechanics that are kept juuust interesting enough by an avalanche of very #auspol jokes about broken coffee tables and Thatcher and avo toast and expensive bottles of wine.
Creator Ed Smith said he made it to get people a bit more jacked up about Aussie politics:
“The aim is to get people interested in politics and get them engaged, even if it just gets them pissed off and angry.”
He seems pretty serious about it, the about page is a slightly ironic call for people to stop doing shit online and get IRL about their politics:
“Hashtags and memes aren’t going to save the world. Actually go outside and meet with people. Join a union, form a union, write angry letters to your MPs/senators/employers/newspapers, join a political party, make a political party, campaign, stand for office, make a stupid computer game, write political songs, go to a rally, put up inflammatory posters about lacklustre political representation, start writing for your university magazine or local newspaper, talk to your colleagues and friends, occupy public spaces, learn your rights, stand up for your rights, call out racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and classism when you see it, and demand more from a political class who lament about the burden of “the welfare state” while accepting huge donations from destructive industries and using tax loopholes for their own advantage.”
Well fair enough, hey.
You can get the game for free on both Windows and OS X, and will keep you entertained for at least a minimum of five minutes. Download it right here.
Source: SMH.
