Parliament Hero is an educational role-playing game that places players in the heart of the European democratic process. It teaches critical civic skills such as identifying disinformation, researching laws, and making informed decisions — all through an engaging game loop based on real EU values, structures, and challenges.
▶️ Gameplay video (30s)- 🎤 Vocal presentation (Romanian, ~20 min) — design, thinking process, and decision making
- 💻 Source code on GitHub
- 🎮 Play on itch.io
- 🏛️ Parliament Hero
- 🔮 Future Plans
- 🎵 Assets
Through interactive missions and dynamic NPC interactions, players will explore:
- 📜 The role and responsibilities of the European Parliament
- 🗳️ The importance of civic participation and informed voting
- 🕵️ Strategies to recognize, prebunk, and debunk disinformation through research and critical thinking
Players align with one of four democratic factions, which reflect the diversity of ideologies in the European Parliament:
- 🟦 Traditionalists – heritage, stability, national identity
- 🟨 Liberals – individual freedoms, market economy, reform
- 🟩 Greens – sustainability, climate action, social justice
- 🟥 Progressives – innovation, equality, inclusive growth
Each faction provides a lens through which players view new laws, debates, and decision-making. Factions influence your gameplay, alliances, and ultimate reputation.
Each round begins with a new law proposal from one of the major policy areas. These laws simulate real-life situations where people may only hear headlines or partial information — and must decide what to do next.
NPCs react immediately, with mood bars showing their opinions. These quick impressions mimic how real citizens and politicians may initially react without full context. It’s now up to the player to learn more.
➡️ This step highlights the challenge of limited knowledge and encourages curiosity, skepticism, and further inquiry.
Players are then placed in a more interactive environment: the Office, where they meet a variety of individuals and institutions who present their opinions or lobby for or against proposed laws.
This mirrors day-to-day real-world information exposure: news articles, conversations, influencers, and social media posts.
Some of these sources are trustworthy — others are not.
Players must:
- Examine biases and political inclinations
- Distinguish between reliable and unreliable information
- Begin to suspect potential disinformation or manipulation
➡️ This stage develops information filtering and teaches players to question sources before accepting them as fact.
👉 View "Step Two" as a GIF (opens in new tab)
This is the debunking and prebunking phase. Players take a deep dive into information: reading books, comparing media sources, and using online tools inside the Library.
Tools available:
- 📖 Click bookshelves to access historical context and data
- 💻 Use the laptop to simulate online research
Players are encouraged to consult multiple sources, compare conflicting narratives, and draw their own conclusions. Critical thinking is essential — and rewarded.
➡️ This phase teaches media literacy and source triangulation, helping players learn to verify before acting.
All these steps are repeated multiple times until an ending in reached.
After a predefined number of rounds, the game concludes with one of five possible endings based on the player's voting patterns and factional influence:
- 🟦 A Traditionalist ending (Traditionalists had the most power)
- 🟨 A Liberal ending
- 🟩 A Green ending
- 🟥 A Progressive ending
- ⚖️ A Harmony ending – where all factions held similar influence
This outcome depends on:
- The faction you supported most through votes
- The NPCs you interacted with and influenced
- The laws you chose to support or reject
➡️ At this final point, the game highlights a key civic message: Every vote matters. Every interaction counts.
Players reflect on how their individual choices shaped the political landscape, emphasizing the importance of participation, presence, and informed decision-making in a democracy.
With everything they've seen and researched, players now face the final decision: vote yes or no on the proposed law.
They must consider:
- Public mood
- Faction alignment
- What they uncovered in the Library
- Long-term effects on their reputation and future laws
Every vote matters and will influence how factions treat you, how the public views your performance, and how future laws develop.
➡️ This step emphasizes the power and responsibility of voting, and the need to make informed, self-driven choices — not emotional or misled ones.
To manage the complex interplay of factions, laws, NPCs, and outcomes, we've developed robust Unity-based tools. These make our game not just a one-time experience, but a reusable educational framework:
Create new NPCs and define:
- Political orientation
- Visuals, names, traits
- Behavior profiles (how they’ll react to laws)
This allows easy plug-and-play use later without coding.
Used for defining:
- Dialogue trees between player and NPC
- Reactions and consequences for yes/no choices
- Political leanings and intensity of influence
All interactions used in Step 2 (Office) are built here.
Used to:
- Add new law proposals
- Define their title, description, icon
- Attach effects and NPC reactions
- Link to existing NPC interactions
These tools combine to make Parliament Hero a full game framework, not just a single-use product. With no programming required and only a short tutorial, educators or developers can:
- Replace content with new topics (e.g., climate policy, human rights)
- Build custom games for other democratic systems
- Scale and reuse the platform for other audiences
➡️ Our goal is to support repeatable, adaptable educational experiences accessible to all ages.
We provide detailed documentation for our codebase and Unity tools in the Scripts/README.md file.
Every feature and system described above—including the NPC Creator, NPC Interaction Creator, Law Manager, and supporting managers—are explained in detail there.
If you want to understand or extend the game's core functionalities, please refer to that documentation.
Parliament Hero delivers powerful learning outcomes by blending real EU content with fun, interactive storytelling:
- 🧠 Understanding of democratic institutions and law-making
- 🔎 Skills in research, evidence comparison, and narrative analysis
- 🗳️ Empowerment through knowledge of how and why to vote
- 🧍 Awareness of personal biases and the manipulation of information
All while staying approachable for young learners and meaningful for adults.
To make democratic education more accessible and impactful, Parliament Hero uses a variety of innovative techniques:
-
🎮 Gamification
Complex concepts such as legislation, civic engagement, and EU institutions are translated into interactive game mechanics suitable for all age groups. -
📖 Progressive Storytelling
The game narrative evolves based on the player’s decisions, making each playthrough unique. -
🕵️ Debunking & Prebunking Mechanics
Players are exposed to misinformation through law proposals and NPCs. In the Library, they can uncover the truth, fostering critical thinking and media literacy. -
🤝 Faction Dynamics
Players interact with and influence different factions, reflecting the pluralism of real democratic institutions. -
🇪🇺 Integrated EU Content
All missions and storylines are based on real EU information, ensuring authenticity and relevance.
Designing Parliament Hero came with important challenges:
- Turning complex, dry procedures into accessible and entertaining mechanics
- Balancing fun with educational value
- Simulating political diversity with dynamic NPC behavior
- Maintaining consistent logic across numerous interactions
- Ensuring each decision teaches a real-world skill
- Designing systems that promote learning by doing, not lecturing
- Creating misleading but realistic fake news examples
- Encouraging skepticism without promoting cynicism or conspiracy thinking
- Making tools robust enough for reusability, yet simple for non-programmers
- Balancing flexibility and structure in the Unity Editor
We're excited about the future of Parliament Hero and committed to making it even more accessible, engaging, and educational. Here's what's on our roadmap:
📱 Mobile Support We plan to port the game to Android and iOS platforms, bringing civic education to more users in a portable, touch-friendly format.
🎮 Controller Accessibility We aim to add support for game controllers to ensure players with physical disabilities can interact with the game more comfortably and inclusively.
🎨 Enhanced Visual Accessibility We’ve already taken steps to ensure good color contrast for players with visual impairments. In future updates, we plan to introduce specially designed accessible color palettes to improve clarity and readability.
📈 Expanded Content Our vision includes the addition of more law proposals, factions, NPCs, and decision paths to increase replayability and educational value.
🧠 Deeper Interactions and Scenarios We aim to enrich gameplay with more nuanced dilemmas, branching narratives, and unexpected consequences to better mirror real-world complexities in civic life and policymaking.
Third-party sounds are from freessound.org as follows:
- 🐱 ANMLCat_Cat Meow Request 01_KVV AUDIO_FREE, by KVV_Audio (CC BY 4.0)
- 📄 Paper rip 1, by omgitsjo (CC0)
- 🦇 bat swoosh, by MrGungus (CC0)
- 🕹️ Menu_Select, by SomeUsername0 (CC0)
- 🎶 Voice Male humming sounds, by bolkmar (CC0)
The 3D models were generated by using AI via meshy with a premium subscription.
Go back to Quick Links to view other resources or play our game!
🗳️ Your vote is your voice. Your knowledge is your shield.
Learn. Think. Decide. Be a Parliament Hero.