A real-time war of air defence and industry. Build the economy, bury it, and layer SAMs over what you cannot hide. Read a fading intel picture of the enemy base and aim every missile yourself. Break their will to fight before they break yours.

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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?

“Close the Sky is a systems-driven war game where economy, research, doctrines, and air-defence balance all interact. The final shape of those systems, including the core match loop itself, is still being decided. How a match flows (the pacing of build-up, when war pressure ramps, how long the endgame should take to close out) is exactly the kind of thing we can only settle with players in real matches. Our closed playtest already reshaped the game in ways we didn't plan; Early Access widens that loop. Players will help tune the numbers. They will also steer how the game is played.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Around six months. The exact exit date depends on how the community-driven roadmap settles. If a system players are pushing for needs more time to get right, we'll extend rather than cut it. The goal is a focused Early Access, not a permanent one.”

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

“The 1.0 version will be shaped by what Early Access players push for. Major content is still to come: single-player campaigns and additional multiplayer modes are planned for the full version, and their design will be informed by how the community plays during Early Access. The game loop itself is also expected to change: match pacing, phase structure, victory conditions, and how aggressive the endgame feels will all be adjusted, possibly significantly, based on real matches. Also planned: new research branches and doctrines (which ones make the cut will be decided with the community), additional enemy AI behaviors and difficulty modes, and new scenarios and settings for skirmish and multiplayer. We're deliberately leaving room in the roadmap beyond that. Several systems in the current build exist because playtesters asked for them, and we expect 1.0 to include features that haven't been invented yet.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The core pillars are playable: base-building across the surface and underground, industry and economy, research and doctrines, air defence and strike warfare, the will/morale system, skirmish against the AI, and online PvP. None of them are final. The match loop itself is still evolving: pacing, phase transitions, and victory conditions will be adjusted throughout Early Access as we learn from player matches. The research tree and doctrine set are incomplete, enemy AI has a limited behavior repertoire, scenario variety is thin, there is no campaign yet, and multiplayer currently ships with one mode. Balance moves meaningfully from patch to patch. Expect bugs, and expect systems to change shape. Sometimes that will be because you argued for it on our Discord.”

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

“No. The price will remain the same when we leave Early Access.”

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

“Our Discord is the center of development: patch discussions, balance debates, and direct access to the developer. We post regular devlogs and patch notes on Steam, read the discussion boards, and have already been folding playtester feedback into weekly builds. Balance changes will be argued in the open before they ship, and when a roadmap decision could go either way, we'll put it to the community.”
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About This Game

Build a city. Keep it standing.


You run one nation's war. Every housing block you place grows a real neighbourhood. Put blocks together and the city gets denser, until the middle of the cluster becomes a downtown of towers. Each of the seven nations builds its own kind of city. Cars fill the streets, and the lights come on at night.

The enemy is building a city of its own. Each of you is trying to break the other's will to fight.

Air defence you place yourself


Radars, guns and SAM batteries go up around the city, and the map shows what each one covers. Drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles come in over the skyline. You see every interception.

Batteries fire from the national stockpile. When it runs out, the air-defence panel marks the battery DRY in red. Every round needs warehouse space: a shell takes one crate, a ballistic missile five, a nuclear warhead ten. A line with nowhere to put a finished round stops at 100%.

Radars and batteries have to stay on the surface. Everything else can be dug one level underground. It costs far more and takes four times as long to build, and only penetrating weapons reach it.

Your ammunition dump is a target


A destroyed warehouse explodes with whatever it holds. The fuller it is, the bigger the blast. A full one reaches six plots in every direction and can set off other depots near it. A buried depot has half the reach.

Intel goes stale


The enemy's land sits under cloud until you photograph it. Recon drones photograph what they fly over. A satellite station sweeps the whole surface every three minutes. Everything you saw fades from white to amber as it ages, and the enemy keeps building.

Strikes are aimed at a plot. The missile hits whatever stands there when it arrives. Decoy sites show up on your intel as housing blocks.

Aim every missile yourself


Press TAB and the camera flies across the globe to the enemy city. Arm a weapon and the cursor becomes a sight. It shows what your intel says is on the plot, the blast area, the damage, how far a miss can land, the flight time and how many known batteries can shoot it down. Click to fire. Keep clicking to saturate their defences.

Cities come apart


What gets through hits real buildings. Towers break and fall, blocks burn, and the ruins stay. A nuclear strike flattens a whole downtown.

Real weapons under their real names


Every weapon is a real system: Shahed and FPV drones, Storm Shadow, Iskander, Tomahawk, Patriot and many more. Each one splits its damage across structure, personnel and electronics the way the real system does. A TOS-1A clears a garrison and barely marks the walls. CHAMP burns out the electronics and leaves the buildings standing. Hover any weapon to see its full profile.

Seven nations


Play the United States, Ukraine, the European Union, Russia, Israel, China or Iran. Each has its own air defence, weapons and research. The research tree has nine branches, from detection and electronic warfare to naval forces and logistics. Research stops if your labs lose power. A tutorial takes you through your first war.

An enemy with a doctrine


The AI fights the way its nation does. Ukraine holds a drone line. Russia relies on massed fires. China launches mass salvos. Israel builds a layered shield. The match log tells you which doctrine you are facing.

Two players, one war


Play 1v1 online against another person. You each get one nation, there is no pause, and the war clock runs at normal speed. Only orders travel over the network, and the game plays the same on a weak connection.

Win by breaking their will


There is no ground to take. You win when the enemy's will to fight reaches zero, and you lose when yours does. Will drains when civilians die, when buildings fall and when strategic targets are hit. Using a nuclear weapon costs you will too.



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AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Some pre-rendered assets in this game and its store presence were created with the assistance of generative AI tools: portions of the 2D artwork (such as backdrop and ramp textures, marketing and capsule images) and some sound effects. All AI-assisted assets were reviewed, selected, and edited by the developer before inclusion. The game's design, code, gameplay systems, writing, and balance are entirely human-made. No content is generated by AI at runtime.

System Requirements

Windows
macOS
    Minimum:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core i5-6600K / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 8 GB
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 8 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: 1920x1080 or higher recommended. Broadband connection required for multiplayer only.
    Recommended:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 11 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 / AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 8 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: DLSS available on NVIDIA RTX cards.
    Minimum:
    • Requires an Apple processor
    • OS: macOS 13 Ventura or later
    • Processor: Apple M1 or later (Apple Silicon only)
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Apple M1 integrated GPU
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 8 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: Apple Silicon Macs only. Intel Macs are not supported.
    Recommended:
    • Requires an Apple processor
    • OS: macOS 14 Sonoma or later
    • Processor: Apple M2 Pro or better
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Apple M2 Pro GPU or better
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 8 GB available space