In a school filled with enemies...only Joseph can help! Make friends, gather votes, defeat bullies, and win the election in this challenging classic 2D platformer to become the greatest student council president of all time!

Players control Joseph using WASD or the arrow keys, and navigate a mysterious dark world filled with bullies. Bullies can only be defeated by hitting the button on their heads, either by jumping on them or shooting them using the SPACE bar. Players aim to reach the end of the level and reach the trophy guarded by the boss.
Each bully defeated, vote gathered, and bully free zone sign cleaned (by touching them) increases Joseph's power (measured by the bar at the bottom right), which in turn increases Joseph's rate of fire. Each hit taken from a bully, however, causes Joseph to lose confidence (measured by the bar at the bottom left), which can only be replenished by blue health capsules. Once Jospeh's confidence is gone, the game ends.

Although little is known about the development process, it is known that development began only a few weeks before the election, and was finished pretty shortly afterwards. The game was quite experimental, utilizing animation and 2D physics that were unheard of on the website (or what existed of it). The game was created entirely by Joseph, including art made in Paint.
Shortly after the game's release and subsequent advertising, it was shut down by the administration due to it being "violent" and "unfair to other candidates" (even though permission was granted before production). Despite these claims being only somewhat legitimate, Joseph continued his campaign using more generic posters. Unfortunately, his speech was disqualified shortly before the election for unknown reasons, forcing him to write a new speech during the other candidates' speeches on stage. When his turn came, Joseph called up members from the crowd and created a rap so great that the entire school had joined in by the end. It was clear that Joseph had won the election. Unfortunately, Joseph had thrown his "speech" into the crowd after his rap, and this caused him to be disqualified from the election permanently. This caused an outrage, and a schoolwide rebellion lasting for the entirety of the following day before being shut down and never heard or spoken of again. Fortunately, the legacy of Joseph's campaign continued, and references to Joseph's battle cry 'Viva Revolution' lasted throughout the remainder of the school year.

• Votes and other power-increasing items also slightly increase Joseph's overall character size.
• In its week-long run, the game seemed unbeatable due to its unfair physics and ridiculous enemy placement. An update was released a short while later with more health capsules, but this version was in many ways more difficult than the first.
• The bullies' insane behavior is due to their colliders having completely elastic collisions with everything. This can have dangerous effects as the game progresses, as a single misbounce can cause a chain reaction where the bullies gain speed uncontrollably and with no limit.
• It is believed that some of the bullies were loosely based off of other candidates, and while this claim was denied several times, the resemblance is somewhat obvious.
• The bully-themed goal was somewhat inspired by Joseph's own 'Bullying Stops!' pin from his previous school and the rise in anti-bullying messages in general.
• It is possible to glitch through the walls by decreasing the game's framerate (usually through outside means).
• Doing the above glitch also reveals that the entire map is actually inside a large black triangle.
• The original version of the game is only playable via Standalone (not on a web player).
• The now iconic music came from freesound.org (Joseph's main source for game music).
• The game is technically called 'Joseph: Running for President', and was planned to be first in a series involving Joseph doing different things (e.g. 'Joseph: Conquering CS50'). This was changed with the release of 'Joseph 5 President'.
• In order to make jumping work (using the level of coding skill at the time), the character is programmed to jump after a certain amount of time has passed since the last jump, regardless of whether the character is in the air or on the ground.

Date

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Date

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Creator: Joseph Lerner

Format: Unity Web Player

Dimensions: 960x600

Completion: Full Game