About World Order
What will power make of you?
World Order is a game about promises. Eight countries begin equal in strength but different in shape: one has energy to spare and no money, another is rich and running out of fuel. No country can win alone, and only one can win at all. Everything interesting happens in the space between those two facts.
Why we made it
The great diplomacy board games are unforgettable, but they ask for a whole evening around one table and a group willing to stay to the end. Strategy games online usually swap the talking for the clicking. We wanted a game where negotiation is the main skill and the map is where its consequences show up, and that fits around work, family and sleep.
So World Order has no turns. You give orders when it suits you, and the game carries them out over real time. Attacks travel for hours and everyone can see them coming, so you can sleep through the night and still answer a threat in the morning. If you're away too long, a caretaker plays your country carefully until you return.
What makes it different
Promises you can enforce
Talk is free and never binding. Deals are binding: they're built from set terms, and the game carries them out automatically, from hourly payments to defence pacts. Breaking one is always possible and always public.
Reputation as public memory
Every country has a Reputation that only actions can change. It doesn't recover with time, and everyone can see it. A betrayal can win you a region and cost you every future partner.
Fog and spies
You never see your rivals' exact strength. Spy reports reveal it; cover stories disguise it. Sabotage, siphons and false flags let a weaker country fight without armies, at the risk of being exposed in the Gazette.
A newspaper that writes itself
The World Order Gazette reports every game as it happens: battles, broken treaties, exposed plots and the rise and fall of leaders. At the end it prints a Final Edition with Honours for the most loyal friend, the greatest betrayer and the kingmaker.
Secret missions
Every country has three hidden missions that clash with other countries' missions. They count toward victory and are revealed only at the end, so the leaderboard never tells the whole story.
Six game lengths
Blitz takes an hour. Genesis takes twenty-four days. Skirmish, Campaign, Standoff and Dominion fill the range in between. Every length plays by the same rules with the clock scaled, so what you learn in one carries over to all of them.
Who can play
World Order is in an invitation-only playtest. Anyone can sign in with an email address and play the practice World, a guided game against computer opponents. Live Worlds fill with invited players, and computer players take any seat left empty. They follow the same rules as people.
The game runs in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, and can be installed to your home screen. It can send alerts when you're under attack or a deal needs an answer, if you allow it.
Fair by design
Every map is generated fresh and checked before a game begins, so each country has equal strength, a fair share of income and missions of equal difficulty. All game rules run on the server, so no player can see or change what they shouldn't.
Advertising
World Order is free to play. The only place it may show advertising is the Gazette, where ad spaces are always labelled “Advertisement” so they are never mistaken for news. The map, deals, battles and every other screen are ad-free. See our privacy policy for how ads and cookies work.