Operation Nightjar

You are the British Prime Minister. Something has been done to the seabed off the west coast. The people closest to being sure cannot prove it — and what cannot be proved cannot be said. 

Fifteen turns chairing COBR. You command nothing. You read datelined dispatches from commands, ministries and agencies, and you issue directives into fog — with two airframes, one of them grounded, a press cycle that will not wait for certainty, and a House that will want an answer on Wednesday whether or not you have one.

**Four quantities are tracked separately and shown on one axis:** what happened, what you know, what you are cleared to say, and what the public believes. Let the gap between the second and the third open up while the press is hostile and belief drifts to the nearest convenient falsehood — and the game names that falsehood back to you. Six allies hold their own confidence in you, separately. The escalation ladder is sticky: easy to climb, hard to descend, and it will not fall below what you have found out. Seven endings.

Afterwards, a counterfactual debrief names the four decisions that mattered, reveals what was actually down there, and tells you what you never found out.

Plays in the browser. No install, no account.

*A prequel to Transition to War (https://odinmedia.itch.io/transition-to-war) — thesub-threshold crisis that comes before the open one. Either can be played first.*
Playtime: roughly 45 minutes.

Click **Run Game**. It plays in any modern browser, desktop or mobile — nothing to install.

Free to play, and free to share the link. If you'd like to use it with a group, in training, or in any organisational setting — or to adapt it — please get in touch first at odinmediapath@gmail.com. I'm generally happy to say yes.

> Design, scenario and all decision structure are the author's. Prose and code were written with AI assistance; the cover plate is generated. Disclosed in full under this page's AI generation settings.