- Dev Diary: SIGINT - 4 September 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. SIGINT - signals intelligence (intercepting radio waves etc, in the game also includes MASINT, ELINT, COMINT, and other variants) - is as wide as an ocean and as deep as an ocean. Espiocracy, a game focused primarily on HUMINT (human intelligence), naturally has to pick its battles and begin with a limited implementation of the technological side of espionage. That doesn't mean, however, abstraction or oversimplification. Similarly to other mechanics in the game, we bet on attention to detail. Today, screenshots will mostly speak for themselves. SIGINT Sites Two core structures that you can establish on the map in the game are HUMINT stations and SIGINT s…
- Dev Diary: USA vs USSR - 7 August 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Change of Planned Release Date: Q3 2027 We are moving the tentative release date of Espiocracy to the third quarter of 2027. While the core game is satisfying, its production (stability, quality, content, learning curve, interface) requires more work. Along the way, we are going to expand playtests, we plan to release a demo, and we'll carefully act on feedback from both, so that the release version of the game is as epic as you deserve it to be. Dev Diary #76 Espiocracy covers a very complex period of history, full of multilayered conflicts and tense brinkmanship. In the previous dev diary, we explored how the game handles this complexity on the level of…
- Dev Diary: Points of Divergence - 3 July 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. This short holiday-time dev diary introduces a new mechanic: a moddable implementation of "points of divergence", a term known from alternate history circles, which denotes significant history-rewriting events. In this case, it's a distant iteration of large international crises (hinted at in DD#51) where two players, turn by turn, engage in a war of nerves over a high-stakes issue from history or plausible alternate history. We use it to implement unique events which shouldn't really be generalized into a repeatable mechanic. A prime example of such an event in the game is the Berlin Blockade: Technically, it's a kind of advanced event chain, so it has a…
- Dev Diary: False Intelligence - 5 June 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Somewhere between 2007 and 2009, the Jordanian intelligence agency (GID) arrested a local doctor connected to al-Qaeda. After three days of interrogation, GID officers turned him against the jihadist organization. As a double agent, he was deployed to Pakistan, where he started providing intelligence and climbing the hierarchy. His case was partially taken over by the CIA. At the end of 2009, when he came back with a false claim of important intelligence about the leader of al-Qaeda, he was met for a debriefing by a team of top CIA experts on the region. During the meeting, the agent activated his suicide vest and killed nine people, including seven CIA o…
- Dev Diary: Counterintelligence II - 1 May 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Counterintelligence - the art of hunting spies - is the backbone of real intelligence world, Cold War history, and spy fiction. Therefore, it should be also an important part of any video game implementing espionage mechanics. This, however, isn't the case and there are simply no games that explore counterintelligence in depth. Espiocracy will change that. This diary and the next diary will explore counterintelligence (CI) mechanics in the game. The first diary about CI from early 2022 already defined the topic as a critical part of the game world. "Counterintelligence mechanics naturally emerge from all the other systems." After this fundamental assumpti…
- April 1st Special 🥸 - 1 April 2026
In spirit of April Fools' Day, this dev diary will be on much lighter side. Don't worry, it's not a hoax or a joke - instead, it's a collection of bugs that we encountered over the years: ---
- Dev Diary: More About The Map - 6 March 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. After two diaries about the map (DD#35 & DD#61), it's time for the third diary that covers all the other features of the map in this map game. Dynamic Borders And Areas Since the map in Espiocracy is grid-based (instead of province-based), borders and areas can be very detailed. For instance, it does feature Saudi Arabian–Kuwaiti neutral zone and Saudi Arabian–Iraqi neutral zone: All the borders and areas are fully dynamic. This narrow strip of British Togoland right by the Gold Coast (modern day Ghana)... ...usually, as was the case in the real history, holds a referendum to join the Gold Coast after which this territory may be merged with the British co…
- Dev Diary: Mods - 6 February 2026
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Vocabulary intro for beginners: a "mod" is a set of modifications of the game, prepared and shared externally by the players themselves (not the developer), changing anything from small details to entire game world. "Modding" means making mods. "Moddability" refers to technical ability of modding a particular game, from "low moddability" (games with hardcoded closed content which are difficult to change) to "high moddability" (games intentionally exposing their internals to modding, that's us!). This diary is mostly about moddability. Grand strategy games are famous for their fantastic mods. Espiocracy, as a game in this genre, will be moddable - it will…
- Teaser: Christmas Special - 24 December 2025
What's happening / This is a small developer diary, a teaser, about Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Short intro: as always, we are posting a special dev diary on Christmas Eve. This time, it's a middle ground between previous AARs (after action report) from earlier Christmas specials and a teaser-set from the last special. For today's diary, I played in Vietnam for roughly 1h and recorded the campaign. From the recording, I captured a few interesting snapshots, which are collected below. Establishing a new station on the first day of the game: Guerrilla warfare in Iran, in a small battle Azeri militia defeated larger governmental forces: Chinese Civil War progressing in the middle of 1946, while player chooses specialization in guerrilla warfa…
- Dev Diary: Achievements - 5 December 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Grand strategy games have no universal objectives or victory conditions (unlike almost all other video games). Instead, players pursue open-ended gameplay, with optional self-imposed and/or externally-suggested goals. In the latter category, special role is played by "achievements": challenging state of the game that can be reached by the player, recognized by the game, and rewarded with notification and a badge. As always, Espiocracy tries to slightly innovate on various tropes. In this case, objectives are a part of setting up a new game: You can add custom achievements, based on values and categories (and even roll a new random and custom achievement).…
- Dev Diary: Advanced UI/UX - 7 November 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Nested tooltips, iconic part of UI/UX of modern complex strategy games, were invented by a solo indie developer: by Jon Shafer for "At The Gates". It's no coincidence - innovation thrives in such environment. I often look at development of Espiocracy from this perspective, looking for unusual (perhaps even first in the world) implementations that not only make this game interesting but could even propagate further in the genre. This is a diary about a few such solutions that made it to the build. They are generally optional (can be turned on/off in the settings), rough around the edges, and will evolve following your feedback in the future. Double Tooltip…
- Dev Diary: User Interface - 3 October 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Today we're continuing our journey through the interface of Espiocracy. While the title of this diary is "User Interface", in practice it's just a continuation of the previous diary, since distinction between UX and UI is rather blurry. Interface Hierarchy Grand strategy games are commonly known as "map games". The map, naturally, is central part of the interface of these games, including Espiocracy. We already explored the map in a separate diary (DD#35). Numerous other diaries showcased various map modes and data layers. For instance, you can click on any country to immediately see its alignment with all the other countries in the world: Here, we can em…
- Dev Diary #66 - User Experience - 5 September 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Welcome to the series of technical developer diaries about Espiocracy. We begin with user (player) experience: interactions, rhythm, and cognitive optimizations of the game. (Three acronyms of the day: LMB - left mouse button, RMB - right mouse button, MMB - middle mouse button.) Time Flow Espiocracy is a real-time strategy game with pause. There are three types of pauses: player's, autopauses, and forced pauses. It's similar to most recent grand strategy games (eg. you can double pause after getting an autopause) but the game very clearly communicates the state of pauses: After unpausing, time flows in ticks, where one tick equals one day in the game (us…
- Dev Diary #65 - Spies - 1 August 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Video games have complex relationship with realism. In their evolution from arcade machines in 1970s to 100GB and 100h experiences in 2020s, games cycled between more realistic and less realistic designs (eg. sim-series in the 90s and early 2000s -> arcade-ish story-ish adventures of 2000s and early 2010s -> revival of simulator genre in 2010s; it also extends to other aspects, for instance cycles of more and less realistic graphics). In a way, development of Espiocracy went through such (miniaturized) cycle. There were months of developing mechanics rooted in realism and there were months of baking strategy-focused fun-trumps-everything mechanics. I hope…
- Dev Diary #64 - American AAR - 5 July 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Secondary what's happening: This is a small AAR, "after action report", where "action" means gameplay. Based on 30 minutes of recorded gameplay. All screenshots are full-screen frames from the recording (which means that, while it's fully authentic, I apologize for not-the-best visual quality and for placeholders/bugs in various places). As always, certain features are disabled (notably, there is no Operation Paperclip). Welcome to the USA, anno domini 1946. We begin as an unequivocal powerhouse of the world, with top GDP, diplomatic weight, number of influential actors, international airports, leading intelligence community, and many other parameters. Am…
- Dev Diary #63 - Spymaster - 6 June 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. As we finish the fourth year of development of Espiocracy -- the main game build with working map and buttons was compiled for the first time in June 2021 -- we are at the stage of implementing deeper scenarios, fleshing out mechanics, and looking for last 10xer features (10xing two pillars of the game: strategy & immersion). Today we'll take a look at such a feature. Main Character Every player in Espiocracy is now, first and foremost, represented by the spymaster. From many playtests, it became clear that the game lacks something critical in the middle of its complex mix of espionage and the Cold War. The obvious answer would be a director/chief but a f…
- Dev Diary #62 - Economy - 2 May 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Grand strategy games (GSG) can be described as a deep/wide exploration of three main aspects of statehood: military, diplomacy, and economy. Espiocracy, as a GSG-like, puts these through the lens of the Cold War and espionage, arriving at fairly limited military aspect (due to the coldness of the Cold War, replaced obviously by espionage, and also by guerrilla warfare and nuclear brinkmanship) and deeper take on diplomacy (DD#51, and ubiquitous manipulation of actors from behind the curtain). What about economy? It's very basic. Since the player as an intelligence agency cannot really interact with economy directly (aside from small industrial espionage g…
- Dev Diary #61 - Geopolitical Features - 4 April 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Espiocracy is a map game: the map is the primary interface, present almost always on your screen, and in development receives a lot of care. It's also unusual in comparison to other map games (primarily grand strategy games) because it is not limited by a specific engine, and instead it can be as bespoke as we want it to be. In DD#35 we talked about the visual approach: prerendered 2.5D relief map which hosts countries defined by flexible point-by-point borders. Today we'll explore further data layers on the map that influence gameplay. The Grid Instead of dividing the world into provinces, Espiocracy uses two levels of grid-based maps. Higher-precision g…
- Dev Diary #60 - Nuclear Program - 7 March 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. Welcome to the second nuclear diary of Espiocracy. Once again, to quote the first installment from late 2022, we meet at a very strange time in world history. DD#30 told the story of nuclear conflicts from a psychological perspective. Today, in DD#60, we'll look at more physical, down-to-earth aspects of the nuclear world in the game. Quick recap of the key term from DD#30, central to everything nuclear in Espiocracy: escalation ladder defines possible nuclear positions for all countries in the game world. The ladder has slightly evolved since 2022. Every nation has a public and a real position on the ladder. Anything we do within the nuclear program or w…
- Dev Diary #59 - Terrorism - 7 February 2025
What's happening / Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page. (Disclaimer: Naturally, the topic, and therefore this diary, is controversial. Do note that it's all about a game, not the real world. Interpret every sentence as if it ended with "in the game". Minor second disclaimer: Since this is a game and not a historical treatise, events that happened "arguably" and "allegedly" are good enough to inspire a part of game world.) There are more than 250 academic definitions of terrorism (according to Wikipedia). Espiocracy, rather than inventing the 251st or choosing one in particular, tries to capture this variety and uncertainty in its quest to fit the complexities of real world onto your screen. The boundary betwee…
