Hey everyone,
POTUS Election Sim 2.0 is here.
This is probably the biggest update we've made to the game so far, and it feels like a good point to step back and explain what has changed.
We've spent a lot of hours playing through different careers, trying completely different paths and seeing what happens when all of these systems interact.
A lot of the work in 2.0 came from those runs. We'd start a career as a mayor, another as a state representative, another as a senator, then try building a new party or taking a completely different route to the presidency.
Real politicians are now part of the game
Starting in 2026, elections can feature real candidates and officeholders.
Governor, Senate and presidential races can now pull from real political fields, and later elections can bring in real members of Congress and governors as your career progresses.
Election night now tells you who won, who they beat and by how much. You can also face real incumbents rather than always playing against a generated opponent.
Congress has also been rebuilt around individual members.
Votes are now cast member by member, so you can see who supported a bill, who crossed party lines and who voted against their own party.
That also makes relationships much more important.
Build your own political party
This is one of the biggest additions in 2.0.
You can now found your own political party at the beginning of a career.
You choose its name, colour, icon, slogan and ideology, then take it with you as you climb the career ladder.
Your party can run candidates in future elections and eventually win state legislature seats, mayoral races, House seats, Senate seats and governorships.
Those politicians can defend their seats in later elections, and eventually sitting politicians can even defect to your party.
Your party now has its own history, members, upcoming elections and political geography.
You can start with one candidate and a party nobody has heard of and gradually build it into an actual political organisation.
Relationships actually matter now
There's a new People panel where you can meet politicians, do favours, praise them, attack them, campaign together, cosponsor legislation and ask for endorsements.
Relationships change over time, and endorsements now apply to your opponents as well.
That means a race can develop its own political network.
The people around you aren't just names on a screen anymore. They can become allies, rivals, supporters or people who remember what you did years earlier.
Congress and legislation
Writing legislation now feels much more like actually putting a bill through Congress.
Your bills can go through:
Committee → Floor vote → Other chamber → President
You can track whether a bill is pending, stalled, passed or dead, and spend political capital trying to move stuck legislation forward.
Congress also knows who its individual members are rather than treating the chamber as two anonymous party blocks.
That means getting legislation through isn't simply about having the right party numbers. Who you're dealing with matters too.
Down ballot campaigns are much more developed
Mayoral, statehouse, House, Senate and governor campaigns now have their own events and issues.
There are roughly 50 new weekly events covering things like infrastructure, taxes, water, roads, transit, disasters, budgets and regional issues.
A mayoral campaign should now feel like a mayoral campaign rather than a presidential campaign with the word "mayor" pasted over it.
Campaign questions also know what office you're running for, so a first time candidate isn't suddenly asked about legislation they couldn't possibly have passed.
The town hall system has also been improved so voters actually belong to the areas where you're campaigning.
The Vice President finally has a job
The VP now has a proper political desk.
You'll see Senate votes, swing senators, legislation and situations where your tie breaking vote matters.
You can also fundraise, travel, make TV appearances and take positions on political issues.
Those choices can help you politically while also affecting your relationship with the President.
The VP now has their own political life rather than simply being a step on the way to the presidency.
The military has been rebuilt
The global military screen now shows formations, personnel, readiness and deployable forces, along with service breakdowns and individual formation details.
Combat also makes much better use of the military systems already in the game.
Supply, sustainment, combat width, entrenchment, experience, commanders and missions now have much more of an effect on what happens on the battlefield.
The globe has also received new, clearer military counters and the military interface has been substantially cleaned up.
The career ladder is now much more important
The career ladder has received a major upgrade.
Your career now tracks achievements properly as you move through different offices, and your résumé remembers the things you've actually done.
There are 12 new career achievements:
First Ballot
Citizen Legislator
Hizzoner
Capitol Hill
The Upper Chamber
The Mansion
A Heartbeat Away
Mr. or Madam Secretary
The Long Road
Giant Killer
The Comeback Trail
Lifer
Your résumé also now knows when you're still holding an office, rather than waiting until you've left before showing it.
The game should feel more alive
A lot of the smaller systems have also been improved.
Fresh installs now start properly instead of showing a placeholder career.
Quick answers are more specific to the office you're actually playing.
You can delegate situations to your staff.
Focused mode makes busy offices less overwhelming.
The social system has been expanded.
Political platforms are much better at understanding natural language.
Election transitions and saves are much more reliable.
The career record now feeds into future campaigns, so what you actually did in office can come back during your next election.
Modding has grown too
Modding has received a major update alongside the main game.
Custom parties can now define their own ballot access, strongholds, colours and political identity.
Modders can create party specific campaign events, and script mods have a much cleaner workflow.
The mod editor and import and export systems have also been improved.
There's now a lot more room for people to create their own political worlds inside POTUS.
20 new songs
Because after all that, the game needed more music.
And a lot of smaller fixes
There are also a huge number of smaller fixes across elections, re-elections, governors, Congress, the presidency, careers, social features, campaigns, saves and the UI.
Some are things you'll notice immediately.
Others are the sort of bugs you only find after playing through several careers and wondering why something suddenly behaved differently the second time around.
That's a big part of what this update has been about.
We've played a lot of runs of 2.0 from beginning to end, trying different offices, different parties and different career paths, and that's where a lot of the final changes came from.
What 2.0 actually changes
The biggest difference is that the game is becoming less about simply going:
Campaign → Election → Presidency
and more about:
Career → Relationships → Elections → Offices → Legislation → Parties → Consequences → Next Election
Your party can grow.
Your colleagues can remember you.
The bills you write can actually move through Congress.
People can endorse you or your opponent.
Real political figures populate the world.
Down ballot offices have their own problems.
The Vice President has an actual political life.
And your career can now leave behind a political organisation and a history that continues after you've moved on.
That's what we wanted 2.0 to be.
Not just a bigger version of the existing game, but a version where the different parts of your political career actually connect together.
There's still a lot we want to do with POTUS, but after putting so many hours into runs of this version, we are really happy with how much more like a proper career simulator it feels.
Thanks as always to everyone who has been playing, reporting the weird stuff, trying strange career paths, making mods and finding things I missed.
We hope you enjoy 2.0.
See you in the next one.
- Dackers Studios