Third Bloc

Third Bloc is a text-based political strategy game set during the Cold War. The player founds a small, fictional republic in 1945 and steers it through 45 years of superpower pressure, six months at a time, until 1990. The state is run from a single operations terminal: every order is a numbered line, typed or clicked, and every consequence arrives in print, from parliament votes and bank offers to letters at the State Telegraph Office.

Caught between Washington and Moscow, the player can stay a client state, switch patrons, or call a congress and found a third bloc of their own, while climbing the nuclear and space ladders from the first rocket to a crewed landing on Mars. The whole game, including its animated films, is drawn in ASCII characters.