Burnham Dash

Andy Burnham sprints through a fog-bound Manchester to rescue kidnapped politicians and pay off the national debt, one coin at a time.

Britain's broke and someone keeps stealing its politicians. In Burnham Dash: Save Britain, an endless runner for iPhone, Android and Steam, Andy Burnham sprints through a fog-soaked Manchester, hurdling buses, running down kidnappers on e-bikes and in shopping trolleys, and chipping away at the national debt one coin at a time. Then it's home to Downing Street for a pint.

Britain is skint. The high streets have vanished into a fog that never lifts, and a man in a balaclava keeps riding off with the nation's politicians in a takeaway bag. Somebody has to go after him, and Andy Burnham is the only one who brought trainers.

Burnham Dash: Save Britain is an arcade endless runner for iPhone, Android and Steam. Swipe to switch lanes, jump and slide through a Manchester that looks like a PlayStation 2 horror game on a wet Tuesday: over the buses, under the roadworks, through the coins. Catch a kidnapper and whoever was in the bag comes home, then texts to say thanks, some more graciously than others.

And the road rarely stays a road. One minute it's a speedboat down the canal, the next a dance floor buried under the city, a dogfight in a First World War biplane, a skydive onto a Deansgate tower, or a fever dream about a very large cat.

Between runs there's Downing Street, at midday, sunset or night the one warm place left in the country, its pavements filling up with everyone you've saved. John Healey pours the pints and upgrades your power-ups at The Treasury. Keir Starmer cuts David Lammy's hair at Keir's Kuts, and neither is pleased to see you. Andrew Bailey sits on the gold at the Bank of England, and at Number 10 you can swap Andy for a past prime minister, anyone from Clement Attlee to a lettuce.

Behind it all is the long game: a national debt to pay off by running, by taxing and by borrowing more than is wise. Nobody said saving Britain would be cheap.

Stratford Life Jacket is an independent games studio of two, based in east London. Between us we know British politics from the inside and engineer software for a living, which is how a satire of Westminster came to be an arcade runner built to hold sixty frames a second on an ordinary phone.