Determine the winner by making the nominees dodge actual tomatoes during stump speeches and literally pick the pockets of old ladies to collect cash.
The dark and cynical humor of presidential politics sees some of its finer moments in TITUS, a $1.99 iPhone simulation that’s basically a series of minigames in an unapologetically Tim Burton-like setting. It’s far from the most realistic virtual campaign you’ll ever run, but you’ll jettison plenty of frustration at the utterly lack of nobility in today’s politics as you wage a satirical battle to defeat and win over an uncultivated nation of shady inhabitants.
You’re an “agoraphobic watchmaker who decides to run for president in the crazy world of Wealland,” according to French indie-game developer Frogames, a description nicely capturing the surreal arena you’re entering. Your skin-on-bones character, looking more pitifully tragic than like a leader of men, is a dead ringer for Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (a collection besieged by frequent thefts). But piracy is petty stuff in a contest where selling your soul is a more fundamental doctrine than the Constitution, if Wealland even bothers with such things.
The ultimate goal is to defeat Desmond, the incumbent president who has turned the land of happiness and freedom that you remember into one of misery and deprivation. But taking such a power monger down is a titan feat and plenty of lesser scoundrels will be trying to thwart you at every step. Your easiest opponent, for instance, is Moon, “a corrupt and heartless doctor at the orphanage in which you grew up. Moon knows you since your infancy. And he knows many things about you … which he kept secret?” Needless to say, he expresses hurt and betrayal when you decide to challenge him in the political area.
The setup and scenes during the campaign are a marvelous canvas of surreal sights and sounds from some corner of the Burtonesque universe, so there’s a mild letdown the gameplay is less so. Instead of scribbling one-liners on your hand about the issues, aspiring autocrats will do well to hone their skills at Doodle Jump if they want name recognition and Kaboom if they want flush campaign coffers. Perhaps fittingly, you don’t have to have any skills at all to engage in smear tactics against opponents.
Getting started is relatively easy for a purported political simulation, with a choice of a single “simple campaign” for a randomly selected office ranging from mayor to president, or the full “story of TITUS” where you have to prevail in nine elections to become president. The simple election offers three levels of difficulty, but it’s a virtual certainty you’ll suffer a landslide defeat with any of them for reasons explained below. Also offered are an option to hone your skills at the individual minigames and an encyclopedia that’s primarily a list of ten tips explaining gameplay.
Cut-scenes can be skipped, but shouldn’t be the first time for the entertainment and contextual value. Once a simple or story campaign is underway you’re presented with a simple menu of choices including financing, meeting, rumor and interview. Additional options need to be unlocked, including the sadistically entertaining “swindle” where you toss your hand out, sort of like a fishing line or grappling hook, to swipe money from hapless citizens as they walk by (luckily – if not for them – it’s available immediately as a minigame).
Those getting their feet wet with a simple campaign will quickly discover victory is an all-but-hopeless goal since Desmond or some other titan is usually among a slate of four other candidates. That’s a larger field than the one or two you’ll face in the early going of the story campaign, and those wannabes tend to be less formidable. You also won’t have the benefit of extra funds from previous campaigns available in simple mode, so you’re essentially waging a presidential campaign with a mayoral budget. Striving for second place is a lofty goal indeed.
By the way, a good indicator of just how antediluvian things are is your starting campaign budget is $150. It’s possible to blow the entire sum just trying to bribe a single journalist for an interview.
The success you and the other rascals have at various activities and in the polls is partially determined by your ratings for reputation and honesty. Too many smear attacks or sucking up to lobbyists for cash can adversely affect these, possibly to the point where very bad things can happen such as not being able to find any more lobbyists to provide that important-above-all-else cash. Without money there’s literally nothing you can do except try to spread damaging rumors about your opponents (gotta love how it’s the only option requiring no money or skill).
The activity you’ll probably spend the most time on is distributing propaganda fliers (which is what the program, in a refreshing bit of honesty, calls them) to mailboxes along the city streets. Every turn after you’ve selected one of the other campaign options you’ll be asked how much you want to spend on fliers in $25 increments. Distributing them is accomplished in Doodle Jump fashion, with Titus delivering one each time he jumps on or passes through a mailbox. There’s a few “group” mailboxes, with three fliers delivered to yellow boxes and ten to those that are blue, plus a rare 3X bonus multiplier that gets your puff pieces out much more quickly for a few seconds.
But make no mistake, distributing propaganda is hard. Even on the easy level it’s much harder than Doodle Jump because the mailboxes are tall and narrow instead of wide ledges. There’s no springs or other aids to boost your jumping abilities and distributing even a minimal bundle of 25 fliers was a rare accomplishment for me for a long time.
The other thing you’ll need to do as often as possible – usually at least every other turn for me – was beseeching lobbyists for cash. This is where the Kaboom minigame comes into play as a shady contributor drops bundles of cash from the top of the screen that you must catch by maneuvering Titus along the bottom of the screen with left and right touch controls (instead of the tilt mechanism used for fliers). Also being dropped are bombs and, unlike Kaboom, you most definitely do not want to catch those. A bundle of cash adds three dollars to your stash, while a bomb costs $15 (but never penalizes you below zero, so you don’t lose previously accumulated funds). There’s a time limit and on the easy level a haul of $100 is a rare and mighty achievement. As with other activities, additional possibilities are unlocked as you progress.
A meeting, which costs $50, is the only other action-oriented option immediately available and consists of avoiding tomatoes hurled at you long enough for the meeting to be declared a success. Bribing journalists for an interview is as simple as choosing an amount and hoping nobody else offers more, while rumormongering simply requires selecting an opponent.
Each turn you’ll get a summary of each candidate’s activities, followed by everybody’s standing in the polls. After a preset number of turns – four for the initial mayoral campaign increasing to nine for president – the ballots are cast and a winner declared. Winning the initial elections in the story campaign isn’t too hard and the difficulty level increases logically, but defeating the evil Desmond takes the kind of laborious perseverance we saw a few years back when HIllary and Barrack were fighting for the right to take on the John and Sarah Show.
There’s a few annoyances. Select and cancel the interview option, for instance, and the program still treats it as though you proceeded and you can’t select it again for another two turns. After the votes are tallied a “tips” option is offered if you lose, but instead of pointing out the reasons for your failure you just get the generic list available in the encyclopedia. It also seems a little strange to begin the story campaign by running for mayor and immediately run for mayor of another city if you’re successful – I came up with a list of nine progressively higher offices quickly and it’s reasonable to think the developers could as well – but I guess a little carpetbagging isn’t a big deal in this land of rogues.
Some activities are definitely more productive than others. Without giving everything away, I tried running a relatively clean simple campaign the first time through and sank to zero percent in the polls the week before the election. I successfully bribed a journalist the final week and somehow finished next-to-last with 11 percent. While that seems massively unrealistic, as a lifelong journalist in real life it was a rare moment of pride in the influential possibilities of my supposedly noble profession.
TITUS is one of those games where my personal opinion is higher than what’s probably an objective score, since it’s essentially a second-rate collection of cliched minigames in an attractive wrapper. Those with a strong interest in and frustration with today’s increasingly destructive politics can likewise bump the rating up a half star or so, since there’s a real pleasure when you’re able to put those miscreants in their place for a change.
Mark Sabbatini
TITUS by Christophe Canon, distributed by Frogames
$1.99
Category: Simulation
Language: English
Requires: iOS 3.0 or later
Rated: 12+ for infrequent/mild alcohol, tobacco, or drug use or references; infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence
Size: 20.9 MB
