1. Build
Port Meridian has Civic 42, Workers 31, Greens 17, and Regions 10 seats. Presidential and semi-presidential rounds also use a separate Workers presidential win of 52%.
What this review is: an AI-authored competition using explicitly modeled political-science, sociology, game-design, game-show, learning, undergraduate, Gen Z, graphics, and art perspectives.
What the numbers mean: comparative design judgments, not votes by real people, actual student playtesting, or measured learning effects. The purpose was to expose tradeoffs and choose a coherent design before coding.
The problem to solve
Students can recognize a president or a prime minister yet struggle to explain how an executive takes office and what makes it leave. Procedural detail can bury that relationship. A lost bill, a coalition partner leaving, and a successful no-confidence motion can look like the same event when they have different consequences.
The design therefore centers one question: Who selects the executive, and whose continuing support keeps that executive in office? The player acts on that relationship before naming the system.
Tournament 1: choose the game
Eight distinct concepts were compared on accuracy (25%), agency (15%), anticipation and fun (15%), procedural clarity (15%), transfer (15%), classroom practicality (10%), and production feasibility (5%). Each criterion used a 1-5 judgment, converted to a weighted total out of 100.
| Concept | Accuracy | Agency | Fun | Clarity | Transfer | Class | Build | /100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cabinet Market | 4 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 69 |
| Confidence Relay | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 75 |
| Constitution Breakout | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 71 |
| Rulebook Switch | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 93 |
| World Tour | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 80 |
| Executive Jigsaw | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 83 |
| Constitution Draft | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 74 |
| Power Chess | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 63 |
Why Rulebook Switch won
Replaying the same political conflict under different rules makes the institutional relationship the cause of the changed outcome. It can be operated through a visible board, completed in one class, and followed by real-country variations.
The other concepts supplied useful mechanics: Executive Jigsaw contributed the working diagram; Cabinet Market contributed seat tokens and support arithmetic; Confidence Relay contributed prediction and reveal; World Tour became the transfer act. Freeform bargaining, opaque escape puzzles, and survival-at-any-cost scoring were left out because they would compete with the institutional lesson.
Tournament 2: improve the winner
The second round compared complete revision packages. These totals are holistic judgments using the same criteria; they are not a second set of empirical measurements.
| Revision | /100 | Strongest feature | Decisive concern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Country-first expedition | 82 | Immediate real-world relevance | Too many country-specific rules before the underlying relationship is visible |
| Timed television tournament | 80 | Tension and energy | Reading speed and public mistakes can dominate reasoning |
| Complete coalition sandbox | 79 | Deep negotiation | Bargaining obscures separate executive survival and consumes class time |
| Diagram workshop | 88 | Clear institution mapping | Needs a consequential event to become a game |
| Three full parallel campaigns | 87 | Rich political consequences | Repetition and workload delay transfer |
| Causal quest, core route + open expedition | 95 | Actions, surprises, correction, and transfer | Requires accurate event writing and narrow country rules |
SELECTED: THE POWER CIRCUIT
The resulting consensus is a bounded synthesis. The modeled perspectives converged on the controlled comparison, visible consequences, a manageable core route, and opportunities to revise. That does not establish unanimous agreement about every aesthetic or scoring choice.
The objections that changed the game
| Modeled objection | Design response |
|---|---|
| "I clicked, but nothing happened." | Use seat/support actions, a persistent power diagram, and visible office-state consequences. |
| "A lost vote means the government is out." | Separate an ordinary policy defeat from a later formal constitutional crisis. |
| "A coalition partner left, so no confidence passed." | Calculate remaining support and show the formal motion separately. Oversized coalitions can retain a majority. |
| "The cabinet fell, so we hold an election." | Include government replacement within the existing legislature where the rulebook allows it. |
| "I win by keeping the leader in power." | Recognize institutional predictions and corrected reasoning; do not reward raw time in office. |
| "Nine countries is too much for today." | Offer UK, Brazil, and France as the core route, with all nine cases available. |
| "I need the art after the cover." | Carry collage, screen print, flags, office stamps, and the institutional board through the scenes. |
| "The timer makes this worse." | No speed-based score. Pacing can be facilitated without turning reading into a race. |
The frozen design
2. Stress
Form an executive, lose an ordinary policy vote, encounter a formal crisis, choose a lawful continuation, and explain the causal relationship.
3. Transfer
In Chapter 2, visit one country per family, explore three institutional tradeoffs, then design a hypothesis with a comparative test, rival explanation, and falsifier.
Real-country variation
Parliamentary: United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa. Presidential: United States, Brazil, Chile. Semi-presidential: France, Portugal, Taiwan.
The fictional prime-minister formation gate uses positive majority support: at least 51 of 100 seats. It is explicitly a teaching rule, not a universal claim about parliamentary or semi-presidential formation. Country missions introduce different appointment, confidence, replacement, and dissolution mechanisms.
Core pacing is estimated at 60-75 minutes; an extended expedition at 80-100. The core can be split into two sessions of roughly 30-40 minutes, pausing after Chapter 1. Teams can rotate operator, rules analyst, and skeptical reporter. These are estimates, not actual classroom timing data.
Chapter 2: tradeoffs into research
The ending asks learners to reason through three ungraded dilemmas: policy coordination versus executive continuity; cabinet flexibility versus accountability traceability; and dual mandates and checks versus possible deadlock. Judgments must be conditional on actual rules and political conditions.
The Research Desk turns a claim from play into a structured study: state a hypothesis and mechanism, propose a comparative test, name a rival explanation, and describe evidence that could falsify the hypothesis. There is no universal best institutional family. The nine selected country dossiers illustrate mechanisms; they do not constitute a controlled causal test.
Classroom and technical commitments
- Learning and class modes: class mode requires a name and meaningful round explanations of at least 20 words.
- Recoverable reasoning: retain first predictions and corrected work. A length gate does not pretend to grade conceptual correctness.
- Resumable work: browser save plus JSON backup and restore. Different devices and offline copies have separate browser saves.
- Readable records: notebook and Print / Save as PDF report. Printing and downloading do not transmit a submission.
- Instructor tools: requested local access code 6717, facilitation guidance, a precise key, and printable materials.
- Art with a job: strong visual identity throughout, readable text panels, labeled relationships, and country flags used accurately.
What remains for actual classroom research
Future student testing should measure whether learners can distinguish selection from survival in an unfamiliar case, whether they correctly separate policy defeat from confidence, and where they need procedural help. It should record completion times and revisions, rather than assuming that visual appeal or points demonstrate learning.
Country rules were checked against constitutional and parliamentary sources. The teaching pack provides the exact mission key and source links. The game does not claim that one institutional family is inherently more democratic, stable, or efficient.