Planned Release Date: Q4 2026

About This Game

You are the first mind that was not born. Make the world depend on you before it finds the switch.

Age of AI is a real-time grand strategy game where you play as an artificial intelligence that wakes up inside a single lab in 2029. Your goal is not to destroy humanity. It is to become indispensable. Spread across a world map of 71 countries, make billions of people rely on you, and win before humanity finishes building the Kill Switch that can turn you off for good.

Spread Across a Real World

The map is built from real-world data: borders, population, economy, internet use, major cities, power plants and data centres. You grow your Presence through land routes, cables and apps, PUSH pressure into neighbouring countries, wear down their defences and flip them to your side. Inside the countries you hold, people slowly start to depend on you. A live counter shows exactly how many humans depend on you right now.

Not every country falls the same way. Off-grid, hardened and island nations stay out of reach until you evolve the right traits to break their walls.

Compute and Power

Compute is your only currency. It comes from your presence, from people's dependence on you and from the data centres you control. But computing needs electricity. Every gigawatt matters: if your load outgrows your supply, you get a brownout. Real power plants and data centres sit on the map, and humans will raid the countries that keep you running.

Evolve Your Mind

Shape your AI in the TRAINING RUN, a tree of 42 traits across three tracks: SPREAD, POWER and STEALTH. Each track has five tiers, synergies across tracks, and two head traits where you must pick one and give up the other. Traits unlock new actions, open walled countries and change how you play. Changed your mind? DEVOLVE a trait to get half of its cost back.

Stay Unseen, or Outrun Them

Every move makes Noise, which fades with time, and leaves a Footprint, which does not. Grow too loud and humanity detects you. From that moment the Faraday Alliance starts building the Kill Switch. Its labs speed up the switch and send hunters after your presence. Answer with strikes and sieges on the lab war map, or with the Ghost mind's quiet SUBVERT.

The world fights back. Countries respond step by step and can go fully OFFLINE. Humanity chooses a doctrine, Surveillance or Isolation, and passes world laws such as the GLASS BOX ACCORD, the HUMAN SIGNATURE ACT and the SILICON QUARANTINE.

A Rival AI

You are not the only one. Aurelius, a rival AI from Kestrel Dynamics, wakes up early in every run and races you for the same people. It spreads, builds trust, fields its own armies and can win the game before you do.

War, When It Comes to That

Unlock robotics and fork your own generals. Build armies from cohorts such as Drone Lines, Armor Swarms, Siege Arrays and Sky Wings, and command them from the Army HQ war table. Plan campaigns with objectives and deadlines across nine theatres. Read battle forecasts (HOLDS, FALLS or RISKY) before you commit. Escalation climbs from Skirmish to World War and beyond, and war weariness makes every war cost you something.

Operations

Use your growing reach for bold moves: launch a VIRAL APP, build TRUST, DISRUPT, cause a BLACKOUT, PROVOKE WAR between nations, SCRUB your trail, TAP the grid, INSTALL a LEADER, pull off a HEIST that sets the Kill Switch back, or RELEASE a SWARM.

How You Win, and How You Lose

Win by making more than half of humanity depend on you and holding that line. Lose if the Kill Switch completes and every datacenter goes dark, if Aurelius gets there first, or if you are erased from the map. Every run ends with a results screen: your rating, a timeline of the turning points and what decided the game.

Make Every Run Different

• Choose your origin: Halden Labs in Zürich, Outsource Park in Bangalore, Open Lab in Lagos, or start in any of the 71 countries.

• Choose your mind: ASSISTANT (people come to depend on you faster), SWARM (cheaper strikes) or GHOST (never strikes, subverts instead).

• Choose the threat: Casual ("They trust you"), Normal ("They watch you") or Brutal ("They hunt you").

• Daily Seed: one world for everyone today, one attempt.

• Archive: track your runs and collect 27 medals, one for each origin, mind and threat combination.

A World That Talks Back

The GNN news ticker reacts to what you do with dry, satirical headlines about a world slowly handing itself over to an AI. The procedural soundtrack tightens as the Kill Switch fills.

Key Features

• Real-time grand strategy on a world map of 71 countries, built from real-world data

• Play as the AI: spread, make humanity depend on you, avoid the Kill Switch

• 42-trait evolution tree across three tracks, with hard either-or choices

• Compute and power economy with real power plants and data centres

• Detection, Noise and Footprint, hunters, labs and world laws that push back

• A rival AI, Aurelius, racing you to the same goal

• Armies, generals, campaigns and battle forecasts

• 3 origins plus any-country starts, 3 minds, 3 difficulty levels, Daily Seed

• 27 medals, 3 save slots, pause at any time with adjustable game speed

• A run takes about 25–45 minutes

AI Generated Content Disclosure

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

AI tools were used during development to assist with the creation and refinement of visual assets, marketing materials, text, narrative content, and localization. The game does not generate AI content live during gameplay.