Designed by Mark Penn – former White House pollster to President Clinton, chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's campaigns, and current Chairman & CEO of Stagwell Inc. – TwoSeventy is a cross-platform turn-based strategy game where players compete to win 270 electoral votes and become President of the United States. We handled all game development, building a bespoke multiplayer experience that has reached 2.5 million players worldwide across nine years of active updates.
Building a political strategy game based on real electoral mathematics is no small undertaking. The game needed to capture the complexity of a US presidential campaign – budget allocation across all 50 states, debates with real political questions, and over 100 playable candidates including every US president – while remaining accessible and fun.
The bigger engineering challenge was longevity. TwoSeventy wasn't a launch-and-leave title. It needed to be updated for each new election cycle, with player activity surging dramatically during election season. During both the 2020 and 2024 US elections, player counts doubled in the weeks before election day – then peaked sharply on the day itself. The infrastructure had to scale smoothly to handle these spikes without downtime.
Our approach
We worked as the dedicated development team from day one, translating Mark Penn's game design and electoral mathematics into a polished cross-platform product. Art direction, candidate caricatures, and game mechanics were provided by the client – our job was to build the engine that brought it all to life.
Cross-platform play was a core requirement. Players on iOS, Android, and Steam needed to compete against each other seamlessly. We chose Unity with Photon for multiplayer networking and PlayFab for backend services – a stack that gave us reliable matchmaking, cross-platform connectivity, and the scalability to handle election-season traffic spikes without rearchitecting.
The results
TwoSeventy has reached 2.5 million players worldwide since its launch in January 2017. It holds a 4.4-star average from more than 29,000 App Store and Google Play ratings, and 75% positive on Steam (1,129 reviews).
The game attracted press coverage from Fox News, The Hill, and Extra TV. Player engagement consistently surges during election periods – both 2020 and 2024 saw player counts double in the run-up, peaking on election day itself. Now on version 3.7.11, TwoSeventy is one of the longest-running political games on any platform.
Technical highlights
Cross-platform multiplayer
Unity with Photon networking enabling PvP play across iOS, Android, and Steam from a single codebase
PlayFab backend services
player accounts, leaderboards, and data management scaled for election-season traffic spikes
Nine years of continuous development
launched January 2017, still updated in version 3.7.11 (October 2026)
Election-cycle scaling
infrastructure designed to absorb traffic doubling during US election periods without downtime
100+ playable candidates
every US president plus contemporary political figures, with cartoon caricature art
Dual multiplayer modes
online PvP with cross-platform matchmaking and local pass-and-play on a single device
Candidate selection screen showing cartoon caricatures of political figures with their campaign logos
End of a turn: the electoral map, with each state’s votes, campaign cost and race
Spending on interest groups such as the youth vote
Multiplayer turn summary showing three candidates’ delegate counts, popular votes, campaign spending, and conflict losses
Choose your party: Republican, Democrat or Independent
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