Nuclear Design Bureau

Nuclear Design Bureau is a sandbox engineering game about designing and testing nuclear devices. You play a junior engineer at the Kurchatov Institute, where the State assigns technical targets and provides a warehouse of dangerous materials. Some directives restrict which materials you can use, and you must build a device that meets the stated requirements.

Design and test devices

The core loop is to design a device, simulate and detonate it, then refine the design. You paint materials onto a blueprint grid to build the primary, casing and supporting systems, then run a real-time detonation simulation. If a device fizzles, fails or wastes material, you diagnose the problem and make changes.

The simulation models shockwaves, heat, radiation and chain-reaction behavior in real time. A detonation viewer shows the blast as it unfolds, with live visual feedback on its behavior.

Measure criticality

In the first-person criticality lab, you place the core in its cradle and lower a beryllium reflector onto it. You monitor a wall counter as the live Monte Carlo k-effective estimate approaches one. The counter lags like a real instrument, and pushing the measurement too far exposes your character to radiation rather than simply displaying a number.

Campaign and sandbox

Campaign directives provide structured missions with technical goals and constraints, including material limits on some jobs. Sandbox mode allows unlimited experimentation with full design freedom. The current build includes the campaign directives, sandbox mode, criticality lab and save/load systems, with stability improvements ongoing.