270: Two Seventy US Election

270: Two Seventy US Election is a turn-based strategy game where players compete to win the US presidential election by securing the required 270 electoral votes. Set across various states in North America, players must strategically manage campaign resources, target specific geographic and special interest groups, and outmaneuver political opponents to accumulate electoral votes. The game challenges players to think critically about campaign costs, voter demographics, and state-by-state strategies on their path to the White House.

270: Two Seventy US Election: A Puzzling Artifact of a Tumultuous Political Era

Introduction

In the vast and eclectic annals of video game history, certain titles are remembered not for their graphical fidelity or revolutionary mechanics, but for their encapsulation of a specific cultural moment. 270: Two Seventy US Election, a free-to-play strategy game released in the feverish political climate of 2018, is one such artifact. It is a game with a singular, almost austere, focus: to simulate the brutal, chess-like calculus of winning a US presidential election by securing the requisite 270 electoral votes. This review posits that 270 is a fascinating, if fundamentally flawed, time capsule. It is a bare-bones representation of American electoral politics that succeeds as a straightforward strategic diversion but fails as a meaningful commentary or a deeply engaging simulation, ultimately residing in gaming history as a curious footnote rather than a landmark title.

Development History & Context

Developed and published by the enigmatic Political Games LLC, 270 emerged during a period of unprecedented political engagement and division. The game’s release in May 2018 placed it squarely in the middle of the first term of the Trump presidency, a time when political strategy games and news-focused “newsgames” were experiencing a minor resurgence as players sought to understand or escape the relentless news cycle.

Built using the Unity engine, the game was a product of its technological era—an era where accessible development tools allowed small studios and even individual creators to rapidly prototype and release games directly to digital storefronts like Steam. This low-barrier-to-entry development context is crucial to understanding 270‘s existence. It is not the product of a large team with a massive budget; it is a niche project, likely developed by a small group or a single individual passionate about political mechanics. The technological constraints are evident in its presentation: a top-down, menu-driven interface with simple graphics that prioritize functional clarity over artistic ambition. It was a game designed for a specific audience on a specific platform (PC, and later Macintosh), released into a gaming landscape dominated by blockbusters, yet finding a small pocket of players looking for a very specific type of strategic puzzle.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

To call 270: Two Seventy US Election a game with a “narrative” would be a profound overstatement. There is no plot, no character arc, and no scripted dialogue. The “narrative” is the one the player constructs through their campaign decisions, and the “characters” are merely avatars representing political platforms.

The game’s themes, however, are its entire raison d’être. It is a cold, mechanical dissection of the U.S. Electoral College system, reducing the sprawling, emotionally charged spectacle of a national election into a resource management puzzle. The core theme is winning for winning’s sake. Ideology, policy, and the moral weight of leadership are entirely absent. The official description frames the goal perfectly: “Can you win the Two Seventy (270) Electoral Votes needed for victory?” Not “can you lead a nation,” but “can you hit the number.”

This reductionism is 270‘s most striking thematic feature. It presents a vision of politics where voters are not citizens with complex beliefs but abstract “Geographic Groups” and “Special Interest Groups” to be targeted and won over like resources in a board game. This can be interpreted as a cynical, albeit accurate, commentary on the transactional nature of modern political campaigning. The game’s systems argue that the presidency is not won through the force of ideas but through the efficient allocation of campaign funds across a map. It is a theme of pure, clinical strategy, utterly divorced from the humanity of the process it simulates.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

270 is, at its heart, a turn-based strategy (TBS) game. The core gameplay loop is repetitive and straightforward:

1. Resource Assessment: You begin each turn (or campaign phase) with a finite pool of campaign funds.
2. Strategic Allocation: You view the map of the United States, where each state has two key variables: the number of Electoral Votes it holds and the Campaign Cost required to compete there.
3. Execution: You strategically invest your funds into states, weighing the cost versus the electoral payoff. Do you spend heavily on a high-cost, high-reward state like California or Florida? Or do you carpet-bomb several cheaper, smaller states to slowly accumulate votes?
4. Opponent Turn: AI opponents or other players make their own allocations.
5. Resolution: The results are calculated, votes are awarded, and the loop repeats until one player crosses the 270-vote threshold.

The game introduces additional strategic layers through its group targeting. Winning over “Special Interest Groups” provides state-wide bonuses, adding a slight rock-paper-scissors element to the pure math. However, according to user reviews on Metacritic, the AI opposition is “extremely easy to beat,” leading to a significant flaw: a lack of challenge and depth. The strategy, while initially engaging, quickly becomes repetitive. There is no character progression, no tech tree, no evolving narrative events—just the same mathematical optimization puzzle each time you play. The UI is purely functional, built around “menu structures” to navigate the map and allocate funds. The most innovative thing about 270 is its singular focus; it is a game that does one thing and one thing only. For some, this purity is a strength. For others, as user United009 noted, it causes the game to “easily and quickly become repetitive.”

World-Building, Art & Sound

The world of 270 is a minimalist abstraction. The setting is a stark, top-down map of the United States. This is not a living, breathing nation but a game board—a literal political battlefield. The visual direction is utilitarian to a fault. States are colored blocks; UI elements are simple text and buttons. The “Free camera” noted in the specs merely allows you to zoom in and out on this board. There are no bustling cities, no animated crowds, no evocative landscapes. The art exists solely to convey information.

Similarly, there is no mention of significant sound design in any available material. One can presume the audio experience consists of minimal menu navigation sounds and perhaps some generic, looping background music, if any at all. The overall atmosphere is not one of patriotic fervor or civic duty, but of cold calculation. The game builds a world that is purely systemic, reinforcing its core theme that an election is a numbers game. The aesthetic contribution to the experience is negligible; it serves functional needs and nothing more.

Reception & Legacy

Upon its release, 270 slipped quietly into the market with almost no critical attention. As evidenced by its MobyGames and Metacritic pages, it received zero professional critic reviews. Its reception is defined solely by its small player base.

User reviews on Metacritic, though few in number (only 8 ratings), paint a picture of a divisive niche title. It holds a “Mixed or Average” user score of 7.4. Some players, like anthstokes, praised it as their “favorite game… Top quality, so fun,” while Karl_Maks found it a “very fun, easy game for when you just want to do something.” These positive reviews highlight its success as a simple, accessible strategic time-waster.

The negative and mixed reviews, however, pinpoint its limitations. The lack of challenge from the AI and the repetitive gameplay loop are consistent criticisms. Its legacy, therefore, is not one of influence but of preservation. It exists as a representative of a very specific sub-genre—the newsgame—and a specific time period. It is a game that reflects the heightened political awareness of the late 2010s. It did not inspire a wave of copycats or evolve the strategy genre. Its most enduring impact is as a museum piece, a game that academics or historians might one day point to as an example of how video games attempted to engage with, and simplify, the complex American electoral process. It stands alongside other forgotten political sims like Election Year Knockout or Election Simulator, a testament to the challenges of translating politics into compelling gameplay.

Conclusion

270: Two Seventy US Election is a compelling paradox. It is a game that achieves its narrow goal with mechanical purity while failing to provide a lasting or deeply engaging experience. It is a clinically accurate representation of Electoral College strategy that feels utterly disconnected from the human drama of politics. It is a time capsule from 2018 that feels both of its time and strangely timeless in its abstract reduction of democracy to a numbers game.

For players seeking a quick, free, and undemanding political strategy puzzle, 270 offers a few hours of genuine, if shallow, entertainment. For historians and game scholars, it is a worthy subject of study as a cultural artifact. But for the broader gaming world, it remains a curious footnote—a game that is less about the art of politics and more about the simple, solitary math of 270. Its place in video game history is secure not for its grandeur, but for its stark, minimalist representation of a system that defines a nation.