The Onion's first video game is a fun, free snack

The Onion Voting Simulator 3D is lighter on political satire than you might expect, rooting its comedy in indie gaming absurdity.

By William Hughes  |  October 24, 2026 | 6:00am
Screenshot: The Onion Voting Simulator 3D
Games Features Game Theory
The Onion's first video game is a fun, free snack

The tricky thing about making a funny video game is that—despite how absurd this is going to sound—games are fundamentally meant to be taken seriously. (It’s the whole principle of the Magic Circle, which I’m exactly the kind of dork to bring up in the midst of, say, an interview with Dropout’s Sam Reich.) The things you do in a video game can be funny, and the context surrounding them can pretty easily be hilarious. But the act of play itself is an agreement to the rules of the universe you’re stepping inside—because otherwise, you’re just that kid playing Calvinball while everyone else is trying to play tag. And that means those rules themselves need to be solid.

I’ve been thinking about the art of comedy games—not for the first time—lately thanks to The Onion Voting Simulator 3D, which, as the name suggests, is the first game officially produced by the satirical masterminds over at The A.V. Club’s former sister publication, The Onion. Posted for free online (with some suitably absurd bonus jokes for the publication’s members), it’s an interesting experiment in attempting to bend the language of online gaming culture toward satirical aims. The basic joke, of gamifying the tedious but necessary work of “healing democracy” by casting a vote in the upcoming midterms, is fairly well-trod territory at this point—as is the joke of filling said effort with cheaply made gaming assets that have clearly been licensed from a freeware library, giving the entire thing a deliberately lofi aesthetic. (This is stuff Bennett Foddy was musing semi-satirically about as far back as Getting Over It a decade ago.) 

The appeal of Voting Simulator 3D, then, only manifests itself in the aggregate: In the feeling of walking into a room filled with jokes, and then taking one after another to the face at high velocities. Including a double-jump upgrade in a game like this is funny; compounding it with a Mario 64-style ground pound whose only purpose is to trigger a world-obliterating explosion, thus freeing us all from the horrors of democracy, is even more so. There’s nothing especially pointed about having the polling place be haunted by gigantic and malevolent poll watchers of undefined political leanings. (Somewhat surprisingly, the game itself is almost entirely agnostic about actual American politics.) But having those hideous and dangerous observers take on the static-y aesthetics and mechanics of a Steam shovelware Slenderman game contributes to the anarchic feel. 

More importantly, the nested, obscure nature of many of these jokes becomes a game in and of itself: The basic requirements meant to fill out your ballot become secondary to the scavenger hunt of finding every single joke that’s been hidden away in this strange little 3D comedy museum. I will also admit to being more susceptible to some of these gags, thanks to my personal history, than many might be; falling down into a surreal hellscape filled with demons bowing down to the logo of The A.V. Club and The Onion’s old shared parent company, while a blocky JPEG of our former CEO watches from across the infernal distance, was eye-catching, to say the least. 

Designer Mike Gillis seems to be well aware of the fact that just voting isn’t really going to be people’s goal; after “finishing” the game, you’re presented with a list of side activities you performed (mine included saluting a flag for multiple minutes and eating too many chicken pot pies) along with a reminder to go back in and look for more. Some of these obscure little comedy nuggets are well-hidden, too, even before you get into the game’s alternate “Stay At Home” mode, where you blow off the tedious chore of being a decent citizen to eat a microwaved burrito, watch The Beverly Hillbillies, and pleasure yourself. There’s a decent little game baked into that hunt, and a number of welcome surprises.

If I have a disappointment here, then, it’s that the satire of voter apathy that Voting Simulator is rooted in isn’t deeper or sharper; at times, it feels the like the game almost softballs the sheer tedium, despair, and anger at the arbitrary nature of things that our democratic process inflicts on us as the price for caring about what happens next. (Or being able to say, “Well at least I voted,” the next time the opportunity to complain comes up.) The “game” itself—the hunt for jokes and Easter eggs at the margins of the deliberately janky-looking world—doesn’t interface with that comedy at all, which feels like a missed opportunity. But that might also just be quibbling, given that this is a free, fun snack of a game; I’m just hopeful that, the next time The Onion decides to embark into the hellscape that is modern gaming development, they come back with something where the game itself can be more thoroughly in on the jokes.

 
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