May to October 2025
103 commits, ???? lines of code
The Federal Election in May 2025 was a strange, hectic time. I was trying to keep down fulltime work while being heavily involved in multiple campaigns around the country, not to mention the usual barrage of weirdness that occurs at the ballot boxes. One of the funnier moments of this campaign was hearing a rumour that the Liberals had constructed a maze of signage around a polling booth somewhere which voters had to navigate, all the while having flyers thrust at them. This image stuck in my head and the day after the election ended, I got to work (see representative image).
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BallotBarrage25 is the result: a 2D browser based tower defence game where you play as the campaign manager for one of three different parties loosely inspired by mainstream Australian political parties (Red, Purple, Blue). Recruit volunteers, print signs, prepare sausage sizzles, and deploy them around the booths to “convince” voters to vote for you. In Australia, we cast votes using a preferential system – so voters preference the parties according to how convinced they are. And just like a real election, parties get $7.62AUD in funding for each first preference vote received.
Play the prototype here: https://mileswhiticker.xyz/ballotbarrage2025/
Check out the source code here https://github.com/mileswhiticker/ballotbarrage2025
Frameworks and technical design:
- Typescript with Vue
- Flowbite and TailwindCSS for styling
- Self hosted on my website with AWS
- 2D rendering entirely in the browser using HTML5 Canvas