Update: You can now read about Liz Truss The Game in The Metro.
Whether you support the Conservatives, or you don’t support the Conservatives, or even if you’re not really sure; there’s no getting around the fact that Liz Truss wasn’t the best prime minister.
It’s hard to think of a national leader who’s caused more chaos in such a short period of time.
The headline act, of course, was her taking a wrecking ball to the British economy with her infamous ‘mini-budget’; but it barely seemed like a day went by without some sort of misstep or controversy arising out of 10 Downing Street.
part 1: tiktok
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like she was playing some sort of video game. It was like a bizarre Grand Theft Auto mission, except the goal was bringing down the government, rather than driving haphazardly into innocent members of the public.
So, I decided to bring that vision to life.
The video raced to almost a million views, and there were enough people in the comments asking me to actually make the game that I decided to give it a go.
part 2: the game
A week or so later, LizTrussGame.com was born.
You are the Prime Minister, and your challenge is to try and remain in office for longer than 45 days – the record for the shortest-ever stint in 10 Downing Street set by Liz.
By issuing laws, and responding to some extraordinary political goings-on in Westminster, you can boost your confidence rating and save yourself from the sack. Or at the very least you can try.
I had loads of fun making this, and had heaps of comments from people who enjoyed playing the game.
If you’ve had a chance to give it a go I’d love to hear how you got on.
the technical bit
A few years ago I taught myself to build websites, and this is one of the biggest projects I’ve taken on so far.
I designed and coded everything myself, building the site in Node.js/Express, using a MySql database. It was also the first time I’ve used Sass for a project, and I cannot believe I hadn’t tried it before.
The content was also written by me; but of course it was (mostly) inspired by real-world events.
As a few people noticed on TikTok, I made the original video in Adobe After Effects.