‘Anomaly President’ Game Review: Politics Meets Roguelike Action
Anomaly President is one of those games that you see and immediately think is going to stress you out. The idea is simple enough to explain in a sentence, yet strange enough to make it difficult to compare directly with almost anything else on the market. In the game, during the day, you are a presidential candidate trying to win over voters, while at night, you become a heavily armed warrior fighting through criminal gangs and the forces of a corrupt president. It is a political campaign, roguelike action game, base-building adventure, and dark comedy all in one.
What makes Anomaly President particularly interesting is that its absurdity is not simply a joke to be a part of conventional roguelike mechanics. The political premise actually influences the way the game is structured. Winning elections, recruiting allies, and improving your campaign bus are part of the progression that makes you more capable in combat.
This game constantly asks you to move between two entirely different identities. You are simultaneously a politician trying to convince ordinary people that you deserve their vote and a vigilante trying to beat the living daylights out of the regime controlling the country. It is ridiculous, colorful, and way over-the-top, but underneath that, it is a surprisingly focused action game with a lot of potential.
[Warning: Light spoilers from Anomaly President are below. It is also worth noting that I played this game on PC.]
Anomaly President is as crazy as it sounds, but it works
The story of Anomaly President takes place in a chaotic future where the country has fallen under the control of a ruthless president and his criminal, corrupt forces. The world is full of uncontrolled and weird anomalies, strange powers that have become part of everyday life. The political system is about as healthy as you would expect from a nation ruled by someone whose administration apparently maintains its power through gangs and brainwashed fanatics.
Rather than simply storming the presidential palace and ending the dictatorship, the protagonist has to fight the system on two fronts. That duality is the foundation of the story. During the daytime sections, your campaign is about winning the hearts and minds of voters. You travel around the country, participate in campaign activities, and gradually build support for your political ambitions.
It is an intentionally exaggerated representation of chaotic and brutal election campaigning. That tone allows Anomaly President to poke fun at politics without attempting to turn itself into a serious political simulation or to be associated with any real-world situations.
At night, the gloves come off. The campaign turns into a battlefield as you enter dangerous areas and fight the president’s criminal organizations. This is where the story begins to embrace the game’s crazy fun side. Enemy supporters and vice president bosses possess unique powers, and defeating them can provide you with access to those abilities yourself.
But under all of it, there is a larger story. The story explains why you are fighting, why you need to campaign, and why your political progress matters. Rather than feeling like disconnected mechanics thrown into the same game, the different mechanics have a common purpose. Whether it’s to overthrow the existing president and replace the corrupt regime with something better or to convert supporters to your side, it’s all made to be very funny, relaxing, and not boring.
There is also a surprisingly charming emotional element in the form of the Fluffies. These creatures are oppressed by the current government and can become members of your campaign team and hang out with you on the bus. They are deliberately adorable, but they are also useful, sometimes fighting alongside you and sometimes contributing to your campaign or base. Their existence gives the revolution a little more personality than simply being a sequence of enemies waiting to be punched or put in their place.
Gameplay and technicalities make for a fascinating roguelike
The most important part of Anomaly President is undoubtedly its combat. The game understands that a roguelike lives or dies by the quality of its moment-to-moment action, connection to a player by giving them satisfying progress, and the combat that has enough variety to make repeated runs enjoyable. You can switch between different weapons and combine them with anomaly powers or create builds that can dramatically alter how you approach encounters.
The game puts a lot of emphasis on weapon variety, which becomes particularly significant because Anomaly President does not simply give you a fixed character build or a meta and ask you to repeat it. The roguelike structure encourages experimentation. You might begin a run with a traditional sword-focused fighter, only to discover anomaly upgrades that push you toward ranged attacks or something closer to a cyber-mage. This is where the game begins to feel more interesting. Choosing powers is not simply about selecting whichever ability looks funniest.
Then there is the campaign bus, which might be the most clever mechanical idea in the entire game. Because you are constantly traveling between areas while simultaneously campaigning and fighting crime, your base needs to move with you. The bus becomes your mobile headquarters, and you can customize it by adding different sections and assigning Fluffies to appropriate roles to help you with upgrades, etc.
In theory, this creates an excellent connection between base building and the rest of the gameplay. All because you are not constructing a random settlement simply because the genre expects you to. You are literally building your political campaign headquarters, and you can see the impact that it has.
When it comes to combat itself, it is energetic. The customizable and variable weapon system gives you room to experiment, anomaly powers are unique, and the campaign bus and Fluffies give the mechanics a space to shine. Most importantly, the political mechanics do not feel completely detached from the action and from the story.
Final thoughts on Anomaly President
Anomaly President is one of those rare games where the pitch sounds ridiculous, but the actual game turns out to be ambitious and should be appreciated. A presidential campaign roguelike in which you spend the day collecting votes and the night beating up the corrupt president’s forces is something one would think is an impossible concept to be realized. Instead, Phew Phew Games has created a surprisingly coherent combination of action combat, roguelite progression, base building, exploration, and political satire.
It is not a perfect game, and it would be unfair to judge it as though it were. The combat has enough flexibility to support repeated runs, the anomaly system encourages experimentation, the Fluffies add personality and useful strategic choices, and the campaign bus provides a surprisingly effective central hub for the entire experience. But it all feels like there’s a lack of emotion, extravagance, and future potential for it.
What’s most important, and that can’t be denied, is that this game has an identity. You can play dozens of roguelikes that ask you to defeat monsters, collect upgrades, and build increasingly powerful characters. Very few will ask you to win an election while doing it.
That is why Anomaly President works as a game that it says and intends to be. It does not take itself too seriously, but its developers clearly take the underlying game seriously enough to build actual systems around the satirical premise. The result is a chaotic but funny game that is nice to play without becoming a pure parody.
Anomaly President is now available on Steam.
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