Designing War Room: how a single-button game grew into a strike simulator
A design retrospective on War Room — Strategic Strike Simulator. How the aircraft / launcher / missile split came about, and why missions scale the way they do.
War Room started in a sketch as a single-button game. You picked a missile, you picked a target, you watched the missile fly. That was the entire loop. The problem with that loop was obvious within the first prototype: the only choice that mattered was the missile, and once you bought the biggest missile, the game stopped having decisions in it.
Adding the second axis
The first big change was splitting the role into Aircraft mode and Launcher mode. Now you had two ways to deliver a payload, and they had different rhythms. Aircraft mode is fast — you fly in, you pick a target, you fire, you leave. Launcher mode is slow — you set up, you aim, you absorb counter-fire. Mission design started branching: some missions favored launcher rounds (heavily defended ground targets, no SAM cover at altitude), and some favored fast aircraft passes (mobile targets, narrow windows).
Why so many missile profiles?
There are 10+ warhead profiles in War Room because we wanted the missile choice to matter on every mission, not just early. A flat gravity bomb works fine on Mission 2; it dies on Mission 12. A lofted ballistic over-flies most flak; a cruise glide weaves around it. A MIRV split outperforms a yield-stacked single warhead against distributed targets. We wanted players to feel each profile was the right answer to some specific mission — and the wrong answer to others.
Mission scaling
The campaign breaks into roughly three tiers: easy (1–5), medium (6–15), hard (16–25). The EASY tier teaches the basic loops — picking a frame, finding a lock, firing a guided missile. The MEDIUM tier introduces dense SAM coverage and harder ground targets. The HARD tier (16+) adds enemy drone swarms launched from the enemy base — drones that hunt the player on a long counter-fire timer.
Hardest balance call
The hardest call was the late-game Sky Sovereign NG+ frame. It carries a six-slot missile volley, SAM jam on Q, and ten wing drones on 1. It is, by design, the strongest aircraft. The question was: do we balance it to feel powerful but still pressured, or do we balance it to clear missions trivially? We went with pressured. By Mission 18+ the Sky Sovereign is the right answer, not an unfair advantage.
Things we still want to add
- A co-op aircraft + launcher mode where one player flies and the other fires from the ground.
- A daily mission with a fixed seed, so players can compare scores.
- A "puzzle" mode — a tight ammo budget, a fixed target list, one solution worth grading.
- More carrier-style missions inspired by Naval Strike.
If any of that lands in the live build, it will go on the Games page first and the devlog second.