Two Nations on the brink of nuclear war. 

Use multiple methods to monitor for enemy strikes.
Your job is to retaliate when you are sure they've struck first.

• Use your Domestic Radars to scan for enemy missiles and bombers.
• Watch Enemy Launch pads for suspicious, unscheduled launches.
• Monitor Global Conditions to see if they would even strike.
• Scan radio freqs for military bands with interference during attacks.

But be careful, this tech might be state of the art, but it's still the Cold War.

The systems (and their weaknesses) are based on the detection systems that they used in the Cold War. This game is based on the story of a Russian man who was in charge of monitoring and retaliating in case of nuclear warfare, who after seeing alerts that America launched nukes at the USSR, didn't believe them, and chose not to retaliate, saving the world from nuclear annihilation.

That man, Stanislov Petrov, used a Launch Detection satellite that could glitch at certain times due to its strange orbit, and there was no other evidence to corroborate the attack, leading to his belief it was fake.

Hit the Space Bar to Launch your attack.
R to restart & M to Mute.

*If you can't see the whole game in the window, you may need to lower your display scaling, sorry! Didn't have time to fix this. 

Tips (& Hints! Don't read if you want to figure stuff out on your own!):

• You can only select 1 radar at a time, if a plane happens to fly into your radar sweep, then it will be detected.
•  The Enemy will send fakeouts and flybys over your territory constantly, make sure to not mistake these for real strikes!

• When monitoring Enemy launches, you can check the schedule to see if one you just saw was planned or not.
• Be careful though, as this detection system is known to glitch. Each Launchpad can trigger on a regular interval (every n days), so if a launch isn't on the schedule, it might be a misfire. You can tell by remembering which days it misfires. Each pad will have a chance to misfire on multiples of the same number (2-6).

• In order for a launch to actually occur, the Global Conditions must be right. Normally this means the Stock Market, Nuclear Ratio, Current Relations, and Democracy must all be low. Our Expansion must be high, and the Enemy's stability must either be low or very high.
• The News feed at the bottom affects this panel mostly, while adding some noise to the Comms monitor and reporting on launches and radar readings.

• The Comms Monitor lets you scan frequencies to find military bands. These ones will have activity and interference during military procedures. There are 3 random military bands each time, and when you identify them, and them see all active at once, that usually means a strike is incoming.
• Though be careful of just normal military activity coincidentally using all the bands at once.

• When the enemy strikes, an unscheduled launch will occur, and there will be unique activity on the radar, and more interference on the comms. The enemy strike will hit after 30 seconds. It takes 10s for your missile to retaliate, so you really only have 20s to figure it out, and activity ramps up during the 30s timer, so it may not be obvious until 10s in.

Just some technical stuff:

If you want to, it works on Steam Deck as a non-Steam game, with Proton Experimental forced and custom mapping to the Space, M, & R keys.

Game made for GMTK Game Jame 2026 | COUNTDOWN using Python Arcade library.

I didn't need to use any art assets because the vector art look fit my theme, but my initial plan was for it be 3D and you have to click on each screen to "lean in", so you can't see all at once. These screens would've been on a larger 60s Cold War era computer terminal.

The game logo was made by me using an Adobe stock photo of an old computer, and GIMP to draw a symbolic version of my game on the screen.

If you start the command from a terminal with --debug-ui, you get cheats basically, and they can also help you understand what is happening in the background.

Some thoughts you may come across of while playing:

"I can only stalemate (lose) or do nothing...?"

A person in this role wouldn't have any control, over the wider world and state of affairs during the war, so you're supposed to feel like that. And you wanting to "do nothing" is the goal. You want nuclear war? This game is a exercise in restraint. You don't want to bomb the enemy anymore than you want them to bomb you. They both end the same.

"So 'winning' is doing literally nothing?"

Yes, it's nuclear war. Everyone loses.

"Sometimes relations improve by the time the nuke hits"

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here about right time to use nukes.

If I continued working on this, I'd add:

1. CRT filter + bloom for authenticity
2. Make the bomber radar activity more readable/interesting
3. Maybe make it so you can get upgrades to your sensors as you play? Like every round you strike first gets you an upgrade for more accurate sensors? Some kinda of progression.
4. Easter eggs - the news feed is ripe for this, but I didn't have time and anything I did think of reminded me too much of real life...
5. Honestly remaking it in a 3D engine with the original idea of "focusing" on one monitor at a time, and also the nicer theming and graphics.
6. If not #5, Optimization, between Python and me just patching together a bunch of code because I didn't know this library before I started...this thing has worse battery life on my Steam Deck than modern 3D games lol.

Sorry if the sounds are annoying, I couldn't really think of anything better that felt in theme, even if they are just inherently annoying. But it also adds to the stress and the tension I feel. I opted out of any explosion sound effects as it would've been too jarring and doesn't fit the vibe. Press M to Mute.

Credits:
Sounds - pixabay
Fonts  - fontspace
Images - Adobe stock photos