МЕЖДУ НАМИ — ОБОЮДНЫЙ ОБМАН

9 November 1983. Major Volkov has somewhere else to be, so the overnight shift on a strategic missile attack warning console is yours. 23:00 to 06:00, which works out to about seven real minutes.

The alarms come in on their own. A satellite reports launch events. Ground radar has something on the northern approach. Signals intelligence picks up traffic that could mean anything, Command sends an order that contradicts the last one, and the hotline sits there being an option you would rather not need. Every one of them arrives looking exactly as urgent as a real attack. You have to write FALSE ALARM or CREDIBLE THREAT on each before its deadline runs out.

You have two analyst sections and they are not much help. Technical checks the hardware. Intelligence works the paperwork and the people. Each takes one job at a time, and each job costs minutes you were already short of. What comes back might support the alarm, contradict it, or just sit there being ambiguous, which is its own kind of answer.

The alert level is the other lever. Raising readiness buys you longer deadlines. It also raises escalation and brings the next alarm sooner. Standing down does the reverse. There is no correct setting. There is only the setting you have talked yourself into by 03:00.

Escalate everything and you start a war. Dismiss everything and somebody will want a word about the one you got wrong.

Worth knowing before you start

• A shift runs about seven minutes. It is meant to be played more than once.
• The first run walks you through it. There is a checkbox on the title card if you would rather it did not.
• Desktop browser, mouse only. ESC pauses and opens the volume sliders. V turns off the CRT scanlines if you would rather read without them.
• The notebook on the right keeps what you have worked out about how each source lies. That is the part that carries between shifts. The score at dawn is only Moscow's opinion.
• Sound on, if you can.

About the jam

This one was a lot of fun to make. I'd wanted to do something with a comedic tone for a while, and a poor Soviet soul tossed into deep water by a terrible boss and an overly bureaucratic system fit the theme better than anything else I came up with.

All the sound is mine, made in Bosca Ceoil with a few extra plugins. The art is part my own work, part 2D asset packs I bought from a HumbleBundle deal (mostly icons) and part royalty-free assets from online (mostly textures). The jokes are mine as well. Unless you didn't find them funny, in which case they were someone else's.

Thank you for playing!

Special Thanks

VV and Lucas for playtesting this tragedy.

My cat Juno.