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Observe

A world that plays itself. Watch nations battle for domination across a 3,400-region map, build infinite alternate histories, meddle with god-like powers, or program your own AI countries and climb the global ranked ladder.

All Reviews:

Positive (26) - 84% of the 26 user reviews for this game are positive.

Release Date:

May 15, 2025

Developer:

Kisotik Games

Publisher:

Kisotik Games

	Interface	Full Audio	Subtitles
English	✔

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Observe is a game about systems colliding and I can't find the interesting collisions on my own. Every player who writes an AI script finds strategies I'd never think to write. Every scenario someone builds pushes the simulation somewhere I never tested it. That loop is how this game gets developed, not a nice extra on top of it.

There's a practical reason too. The Arena is a ranked ladder of player-written AI, and a ladder needs opponents. It only becomes the thing it should be with people already in it.

So Early Access is where I:
-find the edge cases that only turn up when hundreds of worlds are running at once
-balance systems against strategies players actually use, instead of the ones I assumed
-shape the Arena and its seasons around the people competing
-decide what to build next from what people ask for”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Longer than I first said, When I wrote this page I guessed a year. That year came and went, because each update kept opening up something more worth doing than shipping 1.0 on schedule.

So instead of a date, here's the condition. Observe leaves Early Access when the systems that decide whether a nation survives (economy, stability and rebellion, war, the nuclear age) are all in place and balanced against each other, when the tutorial teaches all of them, and when the Arena has run a full ranked season from start to finish. My honest estimate for that is another year. If it slips again, the updates keep coming in the meantime, which is the part I can actually promise.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version is this game with its systems finished, not a different game. Since Early Access started, Observe has gained nuclear weapons, stability and two kinds of rebellion, forts and front stances, buildings, a reworked naval and political system, the Arena ranked ladder, a 30 lesson interactive coding tutorial and era theming. What's left is more of that: deepening the simulation and the tools around it and finding new more interesting systems to add.

I should be straight about what got dropped, since this page used to promise it. Cultures and religions are no longer planned. What players actually engaged with was the AI programming and the Arena, so that work went into ideology, stability, rebellion, nuclear war, and the front system instead. Player-made custom maps turned out not to be feasible at this map's scale. I'd rather say that plainly than leave old promises sitting here.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Stable, and well past what the original Early Access build was. The map is 3,400+ regions and the scenario editor, God Controls, AI Studio with its MiniScript editor and tutorial, the Workshop integration, the leaderboards and the Arena ladder are all in and in daily use.

Warning: this is a spectator-first game, so if you want direct unit control this isn't that. Balance genuinely shifts between updates, because that's what the ladder feedback is for. And parts of the interface are still being rebuilt as the systems underneath them grow. One day this might change depending on how we move on from here.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“The price will go up modestly when Observe leaves Early Access. Buying now is the cheapest it will be.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Discord is where the discussions and the polls on what comes next happen, and I read every suggestion on the Steam forums and every email that reaches me.”

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About This Game

OBSERVE: A World That Plays Itself

Watch entire civilizations rise, war, and fall across a 3,400-region map, then shape the outcome however you like. Build the world in the editor, reach in and command it like a god, or go deep and program the AI that runs the nations. Set it loose and watch your world unfold, or take your strategies to the Arena and pit them against everyone else's.

Watch It Unfold

Observe is a world you can leave running. Nations expand, ally, betray, and collapse on their own across a seamless, world-wrapping map drawn from real geography. Sit back and watch history happen, or steer it whenever the mood strikes.

Endless Mode. Flip the toggle and every time a game ends, a brand-new shuffled world is generated and play continues forever. Set it running and let civilizations rise and fall while you work, watch, or relax.
A living map. Read the whole world at a glance through map modes for alliances, wars, and the shifting balance of power.
Empires rot from within. Conquest is no longer free. Overextended nations bleed stability until their own people turn: rival ideologies raise a civil war out of a country's heartland, and conquered peoples secede in wars of national liberation. Watch a continent-spanning empire come apart without a single foreign invasion.
The nuclear age. From 1950 onward, nations that build the industry can build the bomb. Warheads leave regions as permanent wasteland, and a cornered superpower will use them. Scenarios set before the atomic era stay conventional by default.

Scenario Editor: Build the Board

Design the worlds you watch and fight over.

3,400+ regions across a detailed, seamless, world-wrapping map.
Alternate histories. What if Rome never fell? What if the Mongols rode again? Take full control over countries, populations, borders, technology, and starting conditions.
One-click Randomize. Hit the button and get a fresh, shuffled world to set loose. Instant new challenges, no setup.
Save your favorites. Build a library of custom civilizations and drop them into any scenario.
Share your worlds. Build the scenario you've always wanted to watch, then hand it to everyone else.

God Controls: Reach Into the Sim

It's your world. Reach in and meddle. God Controls let you intervene in any running simulation directly: tip a war, prop up an underdog, or unleash chaos, all through an in-game HUD. Watch a situation unfold, then change it with a click.

AI Studio: Go as Deep as You Want

Want more than a spectator's seat? You can write the minds the nations think with. Observe ships with a built-in code editor running MiniScript, a clean, readable scripting language for authoring AI doctrine: when to expand, who to trust, where to mass its armies.

Never written code before? A 30-lesson interactive tutorial takes you from your first line to a working war machine, in-editor, at your own pace.
Already a programmer? The API exposes composable primitives (full enemy intel, army allocation, front objectives, economy, stability, nuclear arsenals) and gets out of your way. The strategic ceiling is yours to find.
Iterate fast. Run any scenario right inside the editor, watch your script command nations live, tweak, and run again.

The Arena: Script vs. Script, Ranked

Wrote an AI you're proud of? Prove it. The Arena pits your scripts head-to-head against other players' creations in 1v1 duels and a global, properly-rated ELO ladder.

Spar instantly. Load a script, pick any rival on the ladder, and watch the duel play out live before your eyes.
Climb the ranked ladder. Matches are rated with a true round-robin system, not luck-of-the-draw ELO. Each of your named AIs earns its own place on the board.
Run up to 3 AIs. Field different doctrines and see which one the meta rewards.

Watch a world play itself. Shape it however you want. This is Observe.

System Requirements

Minimum:

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 version 21H1 (build 19043) or newer
Processor: Intel I5-1135G7
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
DirectX: Version 10
Storage: 1 GB available space
Sound Card: Yes
VR Support: N/A
Additional Notes: 30 FPS zoomed out. Can get to 60 FPS when zoomed in. I should note that this is a CPU heavy game. GPUs with 4 GB VRAM should be enough.

Recommended:

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 11
Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 4100
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GT 740
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 1 GB available space
Sound Card: Yes
VR Support: N/A
Additional Notes: 100+ FPS was achieved with this setup. I should note that this is a CPU heavy game. GPUs with 4 GB VRAM should be enough.