A software developer known online as Jopel channeled the political chaos at the Philippine Senate into something decidedly lighter: a satirical browser game that has been making the rounds on social media since its release.
The game, titled Senate Run, casts a caricature of Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa as the player character, tasked with sprinting through the Senate building while dodging NBI agents and hazard signs. The premise draws directly from the sequence of events between May 11 and May 14, 2026, when Dela Rosa spent three days inside the GSIS Senate building under contested protective custody after evading an ICC-related arrest warrant, before eventually slipping past law enforcement in the early hours of May 14 inside a vehicle belonging to Sen. Robin Padilla.
CCTV footage of Dela Rosa fleeing through Senate corridors from NBI operatives drew global attention, with outlets including The New York Times and CNN covering the incident — the latter describing it as a “comedic cat-and-mouse chase.”
Jopel told The Philippine STAR that the timing was intentional. “Actually for fun lang din siya and also gusto ko lang din ma-try mag-develop ng game. Pero since trend po ‘yung issues sa senate last week, doon po ako nag-base,” he said.
The game took four nights to build. It belongs to the endless runner subgenre, comparable to titles like Flappy Bird and Google’s Chrome Dino, and runs entirely in a web browser — no download required. “Web-based lang po siya, open lang sa browser ‘senate-run.vercel.app’ then click Start. Tap [or] click lang or double tap para maka-jump sa obstacles,” Jopel explained.
Despite the frustrations that partly motivated the project, he was clear that the game was never meant as a formal statement. “Although he sometimes feels frustrated about what’s happening in the Senate, he created the game purely as a form of creative expression,” he said.
