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statecraft-israel-trailer.mp4
The cinematic trailer (1:23, with sound), made with AI video tools and AI music (ElevenLabs Music) from our concept art; it is not in-game footage.
A turn-based grand-strategy game about governing Israel. You are the prime minister on 15 May 1948. The ministers are the real ones, the map is real, and every historical fact comes with a source.
Note
This is an independent project, and its code is free to read and change for non-commercial use. The game is free and non-commercial. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Firaxis, 2K, the State of Israel or any person depicted. The game deals with war, terror and the Holocaust as historical events. Its framing is Israeli, every fact cites a source, and no quotes are invented. See Historical content.
Concept art (AI-generated): the look we are building toward, set in 1936, before the game's 1948 start. It is not the current build, and it shows things the game does not have. Real screenshots of today's build are below.
You sit in the prime minister's chair from the founding of the state. Each turn you:
- appoint and replace real ministers such as David Ben-Gurion, Eliezer Kaplan and Moshe Sharett, inside a real coalition;
- divide a tiny budget between the ministries, from defence to immigrant absorption;
- house the immigrants in twelve cities, put them to work and train recruits and halutzim, with most orders paid for in Attention;
- move the brigades and order them to attack, fortify or hold, while events move the country along a five-level escalation ladder, from routine threats to full war;
- face real decisions at their real dates, such as the First Truce, the Altalena affair and the Bernadotte assassination, and see why each outcome happened in the "Why?" panel.
A deterministic C# simulation runs underneath. The same choices always give the same result, and a saved game is the seed plus the list of commands. Unity draws a real terrain map of the country built from elevation and climate data.
The game design of record is now docs/GDD.md (v0.2, 17 October 2026): monthly turns in which you build and defend Israel from 1948 to 1951 with units, cities and construction, and choose your ministers. The list above is the game you can play today. The monthly turns, Attention, the cities, training, the pioneers' building and the unit orders, attacks included, are in. Settlement control is only partly in: your units can capture a target town, but choosing what happens to it is not playable yet, so a capture counts as Raid and withdraw at the end of the game. The build plan brings the rest in phases.
Real gameplay, main at 8dae186, 2026-10-20.
Real screenshots, main at 8dae186, 2026-10-20; the start screen, unchanged since, main at 6c54c95, 2026-10-18. The start screen's painting is AI-generated.
It is an early, honest prototype.
What works now (M3, 1948–1951):
- Monthly turns from 15 May 1948 to 15 January 1952.
- The start screen.
- English and Hebrew, with a language switch in Settings. The Hebrew event cards wait for a native speaker's review.
- The 1948 map: towns, villages and Bedouin camps, railways and roads, and the 1949 armistice zones and lines from each agreement's date.
- The 1948 brigades, 101 Squadron and the first navy ships as tokens at their sourced positions. A brigade's card can order it to move, attack, fortify or hold, and shows the odds before an attack. The Arab forces move and attack on their own, and the turn report lists what they did.
- The twelve cities, with housing, jobs and training.
- Pioneers who build yishuvim, training camps, fields, roads and railways, and drain the Hula swamp.
- The Cabinet with appointments.
- The Budget screen.
- The Defence screen, which shows the escalation ladder and the reserve call-up as the events set them.
- Sourced historical events from the 1948 war through the 1951 foreign-currency crisis, most with an archival photograph.
- The "Why?" panel, a turn report after End turn, a short How to play screen and a six-step first-turn guide.
- A Timeline screen that sets your course beside the historical record.
- An end screen with the outcome, the score and the date you met each objective beside the historical date.
- Share: a screenshot of your game for X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram or LinkedIn.
- Autosave and load.
- The browser (WebGL) build.
What is missing:
- The art in the concept image above. Settlements and trees are still placeholder art.
- Most of the GDD: choosing what happens to a captured town, and the war objective.
- Diplomacy.
- Anything after 1951.
The live tracker is #374. The plan behind it is the GDD v0.1 build plan. The roadmap sets no dates.
flowchart LR
V["Visual v1"]:::done --> P0["0 · Decisions"]:::now
P0 --> P1["1 · Vertical slice"]:::done
P1 --> P2["2 · Monthly turns"]:::now
P2 --> P3["3 · Cities"]:::done
P3 --> P4["4 · Pioneers"]:::now
P4 --> P5["5 · Units and combat"]:::now
P5 --> P6["6 · Settlement control"]:::now
P6 --> P7["7 · Full MVP"]:::now
classDef done fill:#e3f1e8,stroke:#2f7d4f,color:#1c2430
classDef now fill:#f8eedb,stroke:#b7791f,color:#1c2430
classDef next fill:#eceff3,stroke:#8792a2,color:#1c2430
| Phase | What it adds | Status | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Owner decisions on the open GDD items | In progress: every phase's main decisions are made | #375 |
| 1 | A first slice behind a switch: one city (Tel Aviv), training, one new settlement and one objective card | Done: 8 of 8 PRs merged | #374 |
| 2 | Monthly turns for the real game, and the five resources | In progress: all but the top bar for the five resources | #382 |
| 3 | Every city, with housing, jobs and immigrant absorption | Done: 8 of 8 PRs merged | #383 |
| 4 | Pioneers, building sites, roads and railways | In progress: 6 of 8 PRs merged | #384 |
| 5 | Military units, movement and combat | In progress: 8 of 18 PRs merged | #385 |
| 6 | Settlement control, under docs/CONTENT_POLICY.md | In progress: 5 of 12 PRs merged | #386 |
| 7 | Ministers, events and the full 44-turn game | In progress: 5 of 13 PRs merged | #387 |
- Art: era-correct 3D settlements, vegetation and units, toward the concept image.
- Release (M4): a historian review.
- Platforms: the MVP ships for the browser only; desktop builds (#905) and Steam (#54) come after it.
- Later eras: the Yishuv before 1948, and the years after 1956, are paused until the MVP is done (#49 to #53).
Play it in your browser on itch.io. Each release (the latest is v0.2.1, a pre-release) has the browser build as a zip; docs/m3-release.md says how to serve it. To build and run it locally:
- Install the tools in docs/dev-setup.md: .NET 10, Unity 6000.3.25f1 with Web Build Support, and
uv. - Run
uv run tools/build_sim_for_unity.py. - Build the web version. The command is in docs/dev-setup.md.
- Run
python3 -m http.server 8000 --bind 127.0.0.1 --directory unity/Builds/Web-disabled, then open http://localhost:8000/.
The exact commands are in BUILDING.md.
First open in Unity. The game scene is Assets/Map.unity, and it opens automatically. If it doesn't (you see an empty "Untitled" scene), double-click Map in the Project window's Assets folder. Then press Play.
Troubleshooting: error CS0246 'PlayerPrefsBool' means the Unity-MCP package (com.ivanmurzak.unity.mcp) is missing its OpenUPM registry (https://package.openupm.com); restore Packages/manifest.json and Packages/packages-lock.json from git. If the Console shows compile errors from a package that isn't in our Packages/manifest.json, remove that package from your local manifest or update it. Unity can't run while there is any compile error. More in BUILDING.md.
- Every event, minister, date and number in
content/carriessources:with URLs and check dates. Wikipedia (English and Hebrew) is a primary cited source for many facts, which is whycontent/is CC BY-SA 4.0. - The model behind the game, and its framing, embed assumptions. It is not neutral, and this page says so.
- No quotes are invented. Text paraphrases its sources.
- The framing is Israeli. Contested narratives are not presented as parallel accounts.
- Events about war, terror and the Holocaust are tagged sensitive. They get a sensitivity review before any build is shared, and the build tools refuse to package until it is recorded. Historian review is planned for M4.
- Found an error? Use the historical error form. It asks for a source, because a claim without one can't be acted on. The full rules: docs/CONTENT_POLICY.md.
Help is very welcome:
- Programmers: Unity, C# and Python tools.
- Historians and history enthusiasts: sourcing and fact-checking.
- 3D artists.
- Game designers and writers.
- Translators.
Before you start:
- Read docs/dev-setup.md.
- Run the tests listed in CONTRIBUTING.md.
- Adding a historical event? Read docs/WRITING_EVENTS.md.
- Keep game rules in the sim, not in Unity.
- Working in Unity with an AI agent? Use the bundled Unity-MCP plugin in local Custom mode; the steps are in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Start with CONTRIBUTING.md. There's no CLA: contributions come in under the repo's licences.
Looking for a first task? Browse the good first issue and help wanted filters, or the open issues (the help wanted label marks tasks that are ready to pick: research, content, design, translation and tests).
You need Unity 6000.3.25f1 (6.3 LTS) with Web Build Support; the exact version is in unity/ProjectSettings/ProjectVersion.txt. Clone, run uv run tools/build_sim_for_unity.py, add unity/ in Unity Hub and open Assets/Map.unity. The batch build, the tests and the browser check are in BUILDING.md.
This project is built with heavy AI assistance, disclosed here using itch.io's categories:
- Code: written with AI coding agents and reviewed through tests and review gates.
- Graphics: the concept and promo images in
promo/are AI-generated, as is the start screen's painting, and the web page's tab icon was drawn with AI help. Tal Heuberger made the 3D models with Tripo, an AI 3D tool. The game's terrain comes from real elevation data. The portraits are public-domain, CC0, CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 photographs (credited in NOTICE), and the event cards use archival photographs; on some cards an Illustration switch plays a short, silent AI-generated loop, and a few historical orders show a short AI-generated clip at End turn, both labelled as such. - Text: event and content text was drafted with AI, and every fact is checked against the cited source.
- Sound: the game's three short sound effects (turn ended, refused order, event card) were made with ElevenLabs, and the trailer's music is AI-generated (ElevenLabs Music). The start screen can play the original 1948 recording of Ben-Gurion reading the Declaration (Israel State Archives).
Nothing is generated live while you play.
- Code: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0: free for any noncommercial use; commercial use needs written permission (ask in an issue). Code released up to and including v0.2.1 stays MIT.
- Original art, docs and data: CC BY 4.0.
- Game content text (
content/, which paraphrases its sources, many from Wikipedia): CC BY-SA 4.0. - AI-generated images: marked CC0, with no rights claimed.
- Third-party material: fonts, public-domain, CC0, CC BY 4.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0 portraits, the archival event photographs, Ben-Gurion's 1948 recording, and the Unity engine and packages are under their own terms.
Details are in LICENSING.md; attributions are in NOTICE and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md, and every image's source is in ASSETS.yaml.
Questions and ideas go in Discussions; bugs and historical errors go in the issue tracker. Report security problems privately (SECURITY.md). CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md applies everywhere.
Created by Eyal Golan. The 3D models are by Tal Heuberger. Source credits live with each fact in content/, the portrait credits are in content/people.yaml, and third-party credits are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.