Not a war

Not a War is a free satirical strategy card game by notawar_thegame, released on itch.io on October 5, 2026. You take the seat of a world leader and try to get through an international crisis using diplomacy, pressure, domestic politics and badly judged late-night posts. The leaders are fictionalized versions inspired by real-world politics, and the tone is deliberately unserious. The full strategy game is meant for desktop browsers; on a phone you can play the leaders' chatroom mode. The developer discloses that AI was used to help with the code, graphics, sounds and text.

Press the play button above to open the game on itch.io, then click "Run game". First you pick your leader and the crisis you want to handle. Each turn you play cards to strike deals, raise the stakes, back your allies or simply keep your own government standing. The game's joke is that every move is easy to announce and much harder to live with afterwards, so the consequences of a card matter more than how good it looks when you play it. The itch page doesn't list keyboard shortcuts: you play by choosing cards on screen.

Diplomacy cards cover trade deals, joint exercises and aid packages. Pressure cards make your position clear, sometimes too clear. Domestic politics cards keep the economy moving and your government intact, which is easy to neglect while you focus on the crisis abroad. Then there's lies.social, the leaders' chatroom, where everyone has something to say and nobody is helping.

On a phone, you enter lies.social, choose a leader and get four "3AM Tweet" cards. Pick a rival, choose topics from the headlines, generate a post, then play the card and watch the replies come in. It's a short, separate mode built around the chatroom; the full card strategy game needs a desktop browser.

Don't spend every card on the foreign crisis: if your domestic standing collapses, the crisis stops mattering. Use pressure sparingly, since the game warns that being too clear has a cost. Supporting allies and making deals tends to set up later turns, while lies.social posts are mostly for chaos. Try different leaders and crises; the seat you pick changes which problems you inherit.