North Frontier
North Frontier is an exciting real-time strategy game where you have to explore new lands, build cities in harsh conditions and develop them! Mine for minerals, build factories, institutes and get rewards for completing your plan!
EXPLORE TERRITORIES! Build in the tundra, on an island, in the middle of an snowy desert or even on ice floe! Show the weather who’s in charge!
BUILD FACTORIES! Pathetic ecologists say that you need to protect nature? Prove to them that they are wrong. Extract minerals, build hazardous factories and of course do not forget about a nuclear power plant there will be no consequences!
Read More: Best Cold War Economy Games.
The Last Wulin
The game is simple and fun.
The game cycle is fight a battle, earn xp and money, use the upgrade your buildings to gain more warriors, equipment and modifiers to decrease healing cost or increase income and caps. Fight next battle. Repeat.
But each round the bandits get stronger so if you don’t pick the right upgrades, or put your warriors in bad starting positions, then you won’t be able to keep up. So while it seems very simple, there’s planning and decisions to make that cost. I played for 18 minutes and lost three times. It was fun, look forward to learning more about it.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cold War Base Building Games.
Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager
I almost let the most prominent Steam review here dissuade me from buying this game. It’s a shame that one so well written review completely misrepresents what this game accomplished and what game it really is. The reviewer really missed the point, or else it was before some updates and long since invalid. The game and its developers deserve better.
Puzzles just have one solution. This isn’t a puzzle. But it is much like chess, and there’s lots of ways to lose at chess when your opponent wants to win. Learning chess is fun, even if you never ascend to learning what the masters tell us: the number of openings with which you can plausibly win against a competent opponent is rather finite. Is chess still fun to play even when I don’t know the game that well? Yes it is. And if chess is a deal breaker for you, should you really be reviewing strategy games?
– Real player with 146.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cold War Multiplayer Games.
This isn’t a game for everyone, but it certainly is the one for me.
In Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager, the player takes on the role of the administration of a space agency. Either NASA or the Soviet Space Agency, usually in competition with each other, or a fictional conglomeration of the two as the Global Space Agency (GSA). The goal, of course, is to land on the moon before your competitor, if playing NASA or as the Soviets–if you’re playing as the GSA the goal is simply to land on the moon by the end of 1973. Playing as the GSA replaces interagency competition with short term objectives set by political higher-ups, with give a small boost if achieved, but a moderate penalty if ignored. If a sandbox is desired with no pressure or competition, that is available too for all three agencies.
– Real player with 121.3 hrs in game
Espiocracy
Disclaimer: Trailer & screenshots are early work in progress
GRAND ESPIONAGE STRATEGY
Choose one of 102 countries and guide character-driven national intelligence agency through rough seas of the Cold War. From Soviet KGB and American CIA, up to Israeli Mossad and British MI6, expect different approaches to grand strategy gameplay.
INNOVATIVE MECHANICS
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Espionage finally made as it should be
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Precise modelling of views & ideologies
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Direct links between causes and effects
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System of geopolitically active actors
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Emergent multipolar simulation
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Operation plans, campaigns, and opportunities
MEANINGFUL DECISIONS
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Prioritize grand scale and leave micro to your operatives
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Establish contacts, threaten, exploit, and trade
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Manipulate public opinion, support and establish political factions
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Launch coups and proxy wars, falsify casus belli
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Hunt spies and terrorists, protect internal stability
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Form alliances, prepare all-out attacks, break rules
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Advise country leader on critical decisions such as military interventions
DANGEROUS TIDES OF HISTORY
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Nuclear race: first atom bombs, thermonuclear revolution, mutually assured destruction
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Huge progress in technology, simulated in the game with Kuhn’s paradigm shifts
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After-war poverty, civil wars, controversial past
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Configurable balance between alternate history and determinism
Jey’s Empire
Great game! Very complex, tons of weird ways to get from A to B, and very funny under the very serious veneer. I saved America from the Red Menace by making a child cry. The only Steam achievement I’ve ever been proud of!
– Real player with 75.5 hrs in game
The dev is a really cool dude, I’ve helped him out with a few projects. The Discord server is also good and I’d recommend his other games like Cold War 2, Cauldrons of War - Barbarossa, and Cat Fu MI.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Death Trader: Cold War
This game was great! It was super fun and im suprised its not more laggy and gltchy than it is, i was sceptical buying it but im glad i did, lots of fun, you need to fix a few bugs but i loved it otherwise and suggest you buy it! One thing I would like to see is things like being able to change the time you start like 1960, 62', 65, etc. I would also like to see more weapons from more country’s, I would like a variety in this game.
– Real player with 31.1 hrs in game
Oct 28
The game has a few kinks but the dev(s?) have been quick to patch. It is worthwhile, especially on sale. I’ve not been able to get more than 2 years into the 30 that the game has due to bugs but I’ve gotten a lot of fun out of it.
Nov 8
I can now play 15 out of the 30 years of the game before it crashes or becomes unplayable. The majority of the early bugs are gone, the gameplay is more user friendly with a better ui/tooltip, was a fun game before but it’s even better now. The devs may have released it prematurely, even as early access, but it’s been rapidly improved.
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game
BORIS THE ROCKET 🚀
A kinda hectic run-around-but-think game, nicely themed around quasi-Soviet missile intercept site. Be prepared to value every second of your time. Missions are around seven minutes each, so this is also a “just another bite” thing. I picture this in the evening, a mission or two every now and then. Then again, I love the setting too : )
– Real player with 38.9 hrs in game
This game is sort of Papers, Please.
During game you need to shoot down all incoming rockets. But task is not easy. You must properly configure every AA missile while trying to get enough resources to produce new missiles, or for upgrades. You alone in that base so must run on foot to every point of interest.
Actually I like games like Paper, please, so this game is my type of games, and I recommend it to buy. Its cheap enough.
– Real player with 11.3 hrs in game
China: Mao’s legacy
I would definitely recommend this game probably the best Kremlin Games has out insofar as the whole political dynamics are concerned (you are able to fully shape your country' s policies and the factions are much more ‘real’). The economy however could have been dealt with better and have a proper blend between it and Ostaglie (placing individual buildings alongside the investment).
Alike Ostaglie, relations with individual western European Countries are generalised as NATO and it would be better to not have done it in this way so we can see how the worldwide socialist movement is doing at the time, which in turn, could affect individual countries rather than having it all generalised as ‘NATO’. This would have been much better as China often had more interaction with Western Europe (with the initial funding of left-wing guerrilla groups then to investments) as the WPO did (which mainly tilted towards its own bloc, which China interreacted less with whereas the game sometimes focuses too much on Chinese-Soviet or Chinese-Middle Eastern Relations, whilst relevant it mises opportunities with Western Europe) as well as making the international playing field (which takes up a large bulk of the game) more active, especially seeing how the Years of Lead, the Spanish Transition, the German RAF and the French Maoists pan out with China still being a beacon of Maoism. Or it could show how China has been integrating more with the west and encouraging the growth of the EEC or NATO (if not becoming a member then associating maybe if you take a hard anti-Soviet line).
– Real player with 131.3 hrs in game
I write this as a gamer who has played Kremlingames previous simulations, Crisis in the Kremlin, and Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall. As such, I can’t write this from the perspective of a person who will be exposed to this type of gameplay and Kremlingames' unique idiosyncrasies for the first time. I can only write subjectively from the viewpoint of someone who has played both games already.
First impression: it uses the same map as Ostalgie, with some haphazard modification to add Malaysia, Indonesia, Rhodesia, and the USA to the nations you can interact with. It’s better than the huge scrolling map of Crisis in the Kremlin, so I suppose I can’t complain too much. Go with what works.
– Real player with 76.8 hrs in game
The Cold War Era
If you have an itch for a Cold War themed game, this might scratch the surface. And by that I mean it’s not a complex, grand-scale type of game, but a rather simple, yet fun and engaging little battle of world dominance which can be played in a single session. In fact it doesn’t even have a save feature, so if you want to go all the way make sure you have an hour or two to spare. It plays sort of like a board game, you start with an equal score in January 1950 as either side (US or USSR) and you have to manage and juggle your resources and instruments (like spies) to influence and obtain new countries which add to your score. The game ends in 2000 when the side with the higher score wins.
– Real player with 18.2 hrs in game
Pretty basic gameplay, but its a captivating time sink none the less. Definitely worth a fiver.
Read the manual before playing, it’s simple to pick up if you’ve done that.
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game
Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall
It’s hard to really describe what makes this game so much fun.
Is it the ability to save the Warsaw Pact? Maybe, but that’s not quite it.
Is it the possibility of reforming the Eastern Bloc? Hm, perhaps…oh, no, got it!
It’s the ability to do both those things, while building an excessive number of TV towers and imagining that you’re broadcasting the amazing in-game soundtrack to every citizen of Europe, constantly, at 100 decibels, forever.
Seriously though, this is one of the best ‘small’ games I’ve played in a while now. It’s fairly short, spanning three ingame years, and although you can go longer, not much really happens after 1992, but what happens in those years is enthralling.
– Real player with 258.0 hrs in game
Reminds me of the old-school Paradox Interactive games. You want tooltips? Clear explanations of what is what? Too bad. Stare at a statistics screen for a while, you’ll figure it out.
There is a neat game here, but good luck surviving for even a year. It is very hard.
edit: Okay, I have played enough I can write a little more.
Did you play Crisis in the Kremlin? It was about leading the USSR through the time of political turmoil and reform when there were many factors that would eventually bring the country to its collapse into many autonomous states. In the game you had a lot of freedom to pursue your goal. You could become a liberal reformer, play as a hardline-communist or somewhere in-between with many other variations. However, you were the main actor. You could decide how you would play. The only real condition of the game was “don’t let the USSR collapse outright.”
– Real player with 250.2 hrs in game