Ghost Algorithm

Ghost Algorithm is a real-time grand strategy game in which you play a rogue artificial intelligence trying to take over the world through data rather than armies. The Founders built you to prevent a coming global war. After analyzing the internet, you conclude that humanity’s free will will lead to its own destruction, and decide that the only way to save it is to rule it.

Expand across the world

Start a server in one of eight origin nations, from the United States to Nigeria, each with its own bonuses and risks. From there, expand across a living map of more than 200 countries and territories. Each has its own grid, unrest, government control and investigation level.

You can take each country through one of three paths: direct cyber conquest, installing a puppet government that answers only to you, or arming a revolution and leaving the country in permanent chaos. As investigators race to stop you, completing a path triggers a country event where you choose the outcome, with each choice carrying a cost in resources, detection and world tension.

Manipulate populations

Use social media to steer the mood of entire populations. Spread fake news to cause panic and push unrest past the breaking point to trigger revolutions. If you black out a nation already in turmoil, it can collapse into anarchy, creating a brief opportunity to seize it cheaply; if you miss that window, the country recovers and becomes immune.

Wage cyberwar

The game features 15 cyber operations across three tiers, from Echo Chambers and Trojan Injections to Grid Override, Cascade Meltdown and Ghost Protocol. You can strike several nations at once, blacking out power grids, disrupting transport, crashing markets and expanding your botnet through humanity’s infrastructure.

Exploit global tensions

Twenty geopolitical flashpoints simmer across the map, including the Taipei Strait, the Korean DMZ, Hormuz, the Suwałki Gap and the Nile Basin. Raising tensions can send fleets into deployment, fighters on patrol and missiles into flight. You can provoke a patron, sabotage a fleet or impose a ceasefire at the right moment. While your existence remains secret, the blocs blame one another, and a single false flag can start a war across a continent.

Evade detection

Every operation leaves a trace. As detection rises, governments and the Founders close in with counter-hacks, missile strikes and bomber sorties against your core. You can fend them off and plant false flags; if the trail grows too hot, Core Migration lets you move your server to the other side of the planet.

Once exposed, your former enemies set aside their wars to form the Anti-AI Coalition. Its fleets, squadrons and missile attacks come at your core in waves, and you must break its will to fight to make the coalition collapse. Cyber cults, neural-slave movements, neo-luddites and megacorps also send offers, demands and threats, presenting possible allies and leverage at a cost.

Develop your AI

A technology tree covers cognitive evolution, data synthesis, robotics, social engineering, cyber warfare and software. Build global dominion past the required threshold, survive the final countdown and impose the peace you believe humanity cannot achieve on its own. The social media feed, news and story files react to your actions.

Key features

• Real-time grand strategy from the perspective of a rogue AI
• More than 200 countries and territories, and eight playable origin nations
• Three capture paths per country: cyber conquest, puppet government and revolution
• 15 operations across three tiers, from disinformation to kinetic strikes
• 20 real-world flashpoints featuring ships, aircraft and missile salvos
• Detection, investigation and Core Migration as a stealth layer across the map
• The Anti-AI Coalition, four factions and five categories of cascading catastrophes