The Steam header for the game
Election Year Knockout is the Punch-Out style boxing game featuring parodies of US political figures that this Wiki is based around. It was developed and published by ExceptioNULL Games and released on iOS, Android, Amazon devices, PC and Mac.
Plot[]
The general plot is quite simple. America has decided that instead of normal democracy and voting for whose policies you agree with most, the candidate most worthy for your vote is whoever's the best boxer. You, the player, are an unnamed, unknown underdog from a fringe party who fights their way to the top all the way to the White House, with the help of a ghostly figure known only as The Maverick.
Gameplay[]
The gameplay is very similar to the famous Nintendo series of boxing games, Punch-Out. In both, the general gameplay idea is to dodge-and-counter. Although this isn't always the case, it's one of the most well-known strategies for playing these kinds of games. In addition, they're both David vs Goliath type games, where all of your opponents tower over you and deal far greater damage per punch than you can deal to them.
In Election Year Knockout, through both punching and perfect blocking, you're able to fill up a yellow haymaker meter. Once this is full, you're able to launch a devastating haymaker punch, which deals a large amount of damage to your opponent. This gameplay mechanic is similar to the power meter in the arcade Punch-Out games and Super Punch-Out on SNES. The key difference being in those games, the meter can stay full for a while, only going down when you get punched or keep consistently missing. In Election Year Knockout, if you use the haymaker, the meter gets completely depleted, even if your punch lands, making the player need to strategise more with when they're going to use their haymaker. Landing a haymaker also entirely refills your stamina.
A mechanic unique to Election Year Knockout is perfect blocking. This is a precisely-timed technique where the player presses the block button at just the right time. You'll know you've perfect blocked when you see gold sparks, hear a different blocking sound, and your haymaker meter increases a bit. In addition, you also recover stamina. Timing this can be quite hard to get used to, but this is a good strategy to adopt in your gameplay, especially if you get winded frequently, and it's quite crucial in getting good times in fights.
Progression[]
The main goal of Election Year Knockout is to become President of the United States and defend the title. To do this the player must face off against the 9 main fighters, all parody caricatures of US politicians:
- Jab Bush (Jeb Bush)
- Uncle Joe (Joe Biden)
- A-Oh! (AOC)
- Ted Bruz (Ted Cruz)
- Cap'n Crenshaw (Dan Crenshaw)
- Birdie Sanders (Bernie Sanders)
- Chief Warrin' (Elizabeth Warren)
- Mike Pious (Mike Pence)
- Donald Thump (Donald Trump)
After beating Thump, the opponents form a coalition and reclaim the regions that you took, and Thump regains his President title. You face off against these 9 fighters for a second time in the same circuit system as before, this time in souped-up "EX" variants of each fight.
There are also 3 more bonus fighters who aren't a part of the main circuit, and instead of being from the US, they are international political figures:
They also come with their own EX variants.
Each fighter has their own set of challenges to overcome both for their regular and EX fights, alongside several Steam achievements (if you're playing on the Steam version). Once all challenges are completed, your profile will have a 133% completion status and you've essentially done everything the game has to offer, excluding player-imposed challenges such as speedruns.