ICBM
ICBM
Game
Game2024
ICBM: Escalation
Developer SoftWarWare
ICBM is a real-time strategy game developed by SoftWarWare and K-Project, and published by Slitherine Software in 2020. The game allows players to weigh nuclear warfare by researching technologies, building stockpiles, and launching attacks on opponents while protecting their own population from nuclear attacks. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
280 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
77
LovedLoved
158 positive · 47 negative
95% range 71–82%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 158 | 47 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 6 | 1 | 64 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 2 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
944 of 1,085 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
79% recommend · 154 yes, 41 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 195 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (1,264 of 1,465 positive).
Players praise the game's deep strategic gameplay involving preparation, deterrence, and timing. [1][2][3] Many reviewers criticize the always-online DRM that can brick the game during internet interruptions. [4][5][6][7] Some players note bugs and crashes, but find them minor due to fast load times. [8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [6]
Great game, and a great update over the first game BUT... their new DRM scheme that effectively bricks your game if you don't regularly go online and let them phone home to their servers leaves a very sour aftertaste for me. So like I said, great game, I'd recommend it, but until they fix that I'll leave this as a down-vote as a protest against a bad administrate decision that really leaves a bad blemish on an …
- [1]
ICBM: Escalation is about preparation, deterrence, and timing. You begin with a nation under your control, managing research, production, and deployment of nuclear forces. Unlike traditional RTS games that rely on base-building or resource gathering, here the “resources” are geopolitical positioning, missile silos, submarine fleets, radar coverage, and the ability to second-guess your opponent’s moves. The …
- [2]
Like DEFCON (2006), improved for the modern day and expanded into a full-blown RTS game. I put 55 hours in - if playing with friends, I could easily put in another 100+ The good: - Massive, detailed, and (reasonably) accurate tech tree(s) (11 of them). Nukes don't just get "bigger", technology affects specific units, many technologies require prerequisites in different trees. - Incredibly customizable War Room - …
- [3]
The problem I always had with DEFCON was that it wasn't really a game, more of a social experiment with a menu screen, and after a few replays you'd kind of gotten all the meat off the bones of the game. It was very rock-paper-scissors in a way that felt like someone had just seen that one bit from WarGames and made that into...well, a game. ICBM: Escalation feels like an actual video game, but also adds so many new …
- [4]
The actually gameplay is great, I have some balance concerns (conventional ballistic missiles are absolutely useless and certain builds are just completely impossible) but overall I do enjoy playing it. That said, I legitimately debated whether I was going to recommend this game or not. My main criticism is that this single-player game is basically online-only. The developer will lie to you and say that it only …
Summarised from 34 of the 260 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
ICBM: Escalation sits at 77% positive across 205 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Wargamer compared the game to DEFCON (2006) and wrote: "For all of ICBM's good aspects and good ideas, there's just not much depth to it all." PCMag gave the game a rating of four out of five and also compared it to DEFCON. The graphics were described as satisfactory and the user interface as simple and understandable. They would have liked the scenarios to have more variety and the tutorials to be more interesting.
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 280 · most liked first🇷🇺 Russia’s playing the intimidation game again — planning a “training-combat” launch of a Yars ICBM on the night of May 19, according to Ukraine’s intel. The move is aimed at pressuring Ukraine, the EU, and NATO. The missile, with a mock warhead, will be launched from Sverdlovsk.
neutral · AI labelView post →A 1970 computer game called ICBM lives once more after spending decades trapped as source code on paper. Let that be another lesson in the importance of printouts!
neutral · AI labelView post →i think one of my favorite maneuvers by any boss from any game ever is when Jupiter King, from Metal Slug 3, grabs an implausibly large ICBM from its chest cavity and instead of doing anything clever, it just slams it nose-first into the floor
neutral · AI labelView post →Not only is third-party DRM not disclosed on their page, they're using Microsoft Playfab which interfaces with Azure (Microsoft's cloud platform). This is not an anti-piracy measure like ALL other DRM services among Kernel Anti-Cheat measures and crash dumps that communicate with similar services like EoS or AWS, it's about "analytics" (another term many game developers use to claim they utilize in improving their games which is possible but it's also a screen for relaying consumer data…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great game, and a great update over the first game BUT... their new DRM scheme that effectively bricks your game if you don't regularly go online and let them phone home to their servers leaves a very sour aftertaste for me. So like I said, great game, I'd recommend it, but until they fix that I'll leave this as a down-vote as a protest against a bad administrate decision that really leaves a bad blemish on an otherwise excellent game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Playing with shapes at the abandoned ICBM radar in North Dakota.
neutral · AI labelView post →DRM disables the game if you have a small hickup in internet connection. Can make the entire game unplayable
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This dev does not understand privacy concerns or GDPR, blows off concerned customers as paranoid. However steam account details and ip address are all personal data. Honestly it's a fine game, but I would not recommend buying from someone who honestly seems to have an adversarial relationship with paying customers. When a dev replies to reviews with "Exemplary case of paranoid disorder." Time to take a step back, and look at what you are doing to your paying customers. This game isn't able to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →ICBM: Escalation is about preparation, deterrence, and timing. You begin with a nation under your control, managing research, production, and deployment of nuclear forces. Unlike traditional RTS games that rely on base-building or resource gathering, here the “resources” are geopolitical positioning, missile silos, submarine fleets, radar coverage, and the ability to second-guess your opponent’s moves. The escalation curve is brilliantly designed. Early on, the game is all about intelligence…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You cannot play offline, why???? The game wants to connect to steam every 10 minutes, if you are offline you get a popup saying you have to connect only periodically and can play afterwards. But after 10 minutes offline it pops up again and freezes the game until you go online. This is absolutely inacceptible, if they shut down the servers in the future this game will become entirely unplayable. Also the price is pretty steep for such an unpolished game, the UI could be much better designed…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Buyer beware! The DRM on this game is atrocious - any connection issue, going offline in your steam friends, the date changing at midnight. All of the above will immediately brick the game, forcing it to stop every 2 seconds and pop up a warning saying it can't connect to steam.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a great game and expands a ton on the first title and the original DEFCON, but I hope you have a bunch of friends who are willing to play, or you will very quickly find the bigger flaws. The AI in particular is very poor—both your AI and the enemies'—making the game feel like the most micro-heavy game of whack-a-mole ever. The AI will just send wave after wave of army divisions, completely falling behind in production and research and being left with nothing after losing all of their…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The developers love artificial and pointless timers. My pet peeve. I really want to like this game, but every time i get some good game play going... freakin timer. Edit: In response to @dounttron. That is part of it. But there's also the campaigns. The missions are on timers, and you have to micro that. Can't go too quickly, or you miss out on research for the next mission. Can't go too slowly, or you loose.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Update 7/22/2026: Game is still randomly made unplayable due to the DRM. Very annoying, I bet there would be more players if people weren't randomly unable to play the game. Fix DRM Please. I am annoyed. I really enjoy the game but now when I launch it from steam, it says it cannot connect to steam cloud to confirm my copy of the game is valid. When the game is started it keeps pausing saying I need to sync to steam cloud. Remove this from the game please. Its unneeded and annoying. If people…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Sentinel ICBM industry PR video claims it will have “game-changing capabilities” youtu.be/OYVWY5dzv1I?... including new propulsion system in payload section to increase warhead accuracy. Already over budget, USAF claims it will be cheaper. www.airandspaceforces.com/sentinel-icb...
neutral · AI labelView post →The game was released on the day that mankind first used an ICBM in actual combat. I don't know if it's an eerie coincidence or if the publisher intended it to be.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nuclear disaster is just one fussy cat away, can you fix the faulty automatic ICBM launch system? An old school fun point and click adventure game set in a nuclear silo in Siberia during the cold war. #indiegame #adventuregame #pixelart #retro
neutral · AI labelView post →cant play becuase the game keeps on stopping every 2 seconds for it being unable to connect to steam when playing single player
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Did you know? That if you dropped a ICBM on Michigan stadium during a Ohio state vs Michigan football game, you would make the world a better place ?
neutral · AI labelView post →It's a very good game, if you can play it, but it has an always online requirement that they won't admit to. That's bad enough, but even worse is that the game mostly now won't connect itself to the their servers: the game repeatedly and constantly pauses the game to 'helpfully' notify you that there are apparently 'steam connection problems'. The game won't let me turn off or ignore this exceedingly helpful and welcome force pausing notification, which repeats every 2 seconds or so. There are…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is an excellent game. It's very well optimized and easy to run, and the gameplay is fun and has depth. That's why I hate to leave a negative review on it. However, the developers recently implemented a DRM scheme which makes the game online only, even in singleplayer gamemodes. This makes the game unplayable for anyone who doesn't always have a reliable internet connection. Edit: Seems like the DRM has been in the game for a long time. I only noticed it recently. The DRM checks if you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Like DEFCON (2006), improved for the modern day and expanded into a full-blown RTS game. I put 55 hours in - if playing with friends, I could easily put in another 100+ The good: - Massive, detailed, and (reasonably) accurate tech tree(s) (11 of them). Nukes don't just get "bigger", technology affects specific units, many technologies require prerequisites in different trees. - Incredibly customizable War Room - create quick or detailed strategic or tactical plans, and execute immediately,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i wouldn't say the gameplay is *deep* but unfurling the capabilities of each character and chaining them together feels good. The Gacha MC (note: this game is not a gacha) is usually an instant discard but Lute being able to dropkick like an ICBM is immediately charming.
neutral · AI labelView post →This game used to be great however after the last major update it causes my PC to crash. After about 1 minute in game it starts stuttering and slowing down so I close the game. After this my keyboard locks up and about 5 minutes later my PC crashes forcing a restart. This only happens with this game and has happened 5 out of 5 times attempting to find the problem. Aside from my PC crashing DRM is an issue, I typically remain offline at all times but for some reason you CAN NOT play this game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this DRM scheme doesn't work properly, wasted a whole night because playfab and some other API's were not working...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Alright, the game is not bad but... the launcher. I have nothing against games that use their own launcher, but please make it work properly. Not that it launches the game just when it wants to. (like 50% of the time)
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not recommended till they fix the DRM issue
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →seems like it gets worse each update
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The problem I always had with DEFCON was that it wasn't really a game, more of a social experiment with a menu screen, and after a few replays you'd kind of gotten all the meat off the bones of the game. It was very rock-paper-scissors in a way that felt like someone had just seen that one bit from WarGames and made that into...well, a game. ICBM: Escalation feels like an actual video game, but also adds so many new and interesting features that it's a rather good video game too. The fact that…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Suppose one of these former Soviet ICBM bases could house Oreshnik. Let the game begin.
neutral · AI labelView post →should I jerk off?
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →With the AI rework, the game has just become a ragebait simulator. The new AI just does the most mindbogglingly stupid things which inconvenience the player at absolutely no strategic gain to the AI. This makes singleplayer just completely unplayable if you have any sort of respect for yourself.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed. A city has been bombed.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is an absolute blast. The fact that you can choose between waging conventional warfare or unleashing full-scale nuclear annihilation is something I never knew I needed — and now I can't imagine playing without it. Sure, bugs and crashes pop up occasionally, but the load times are so fast that it barely registers as an issue. Pros: Controls 8/10 — Smooth and easy to pick up. Little customization involved sadly. Graphics 9/10 — The detail on every unit is genuinely impressive.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game breaking bugs for weeks. After 200 hours played I have been cucked out of the game completely. I can not play at all due to a "steam connection issue" Seems to be the developers homemade, and completely broken DRM.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yes, it's fun, both in campaign mode and as a skirmish (didn't try multiplayer). But the DRM makes it unplayable. All it takes is for your Internet connection to drop for just a moment, which, sadly, happens a lot to me in travel, and suddenly your research times go from 2min to 2h. 0 care for the players.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →ICBM: Escalation is a great improvement over its predecessor (ICBM). After thousands of hours (and I truly mean thousands of hours) dedicated to gaming ancient, medieval, fantasy, horse and musket and conventional modern strategic and tactical warfare, this game has discovered to me a whole new world in strategy gaming. The learning curve is quite steep, specially regarding the thermonuclear level and atomic warfare mechanics Fortunately, the campaign series of scenarios introduce modern…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Timeouts are crazy. Cant recommend until fixed. Its always had issues but.... not its more frequent so again uninstalling. Sorry devs. Since this isn't a live service game i don't quite even understand why this technology is implemented. If poor experience out ways comorbidity and compatibilities maybe we ask whether we should just not support further developments from this group. Hate to say that but this isn't a 1 month issue. Since I've bought the game crashes go up, and i keep pretty much…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →actually really funny to put an item from a completely differnet genre and setting into a game. here's a high fantasy rts with an emphasis on positioning and tactics. oh and by the way here's an ICBM.
neutral · AI labelView post →TLDR: Great game, even better warcrime simulator. So the game is good fun, basically you build up your country, research (mostly warcrimey) tech and eventually war breaks out. At this point you hopefully managed to build up decent defences as both you and your enemy will start shelling each other with nuclear, chemical or even biological weapons. These can be fired from Silos, vehicles, Submarines, and Aircraft and can be intercepted by a multitude of ways. This means theres a ton of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Now I know how it feels to destroy some one billion $ THAAD systems with 20k $ drones. Too bad there are no aircraft carrier "laundry-on-fire" types of damage tho. Pro: great game Con: no toilet upgrade for new generation carriers
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun game but PVE AI needs work. I spawned in as North America. Setup along the Mexico border cus Central America has assets there. CA had a tank on the border CLEARLY moving into NA even before the “No war” timer was up. The second the timer finished was getting invaded by CA. Easily pushed them back and took 2 of their provinces, offered peace so I could tech, they accepted. 2 minutes later CA invades me again. Ok sure, easily pushed it off again and took 2 more territories. They accepted…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →ICBM Escalation is an awesome game that I really enjoy the geopolitical decisions you have to make about using atomic or chemical weapons the different units in the game make it feel like the developers literally made a nuclear war simulation as a game it could easily be just a deep simulation in a YouTube video but they turned it into a playable game which is really cool I wish there were more diverse ground units and not just big factions but individual countries like Germany France England…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A vampire aerospace or nuclear engineer would probably be a game changer for maintaining legacy ICBM systems, tbh
neutral · AI labelView post →i nuke russia 10/10 game
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I like the game, but the always online feature sucks, i paid for this and i have to restart the game because for some reason it didn't connect to steam.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really liked the game campaign, had a lot of fun in the skirmish. I wasn't planning on reviewing the game, but seeing the current review bombing I want to support the developers - buying their DLCs and leaving a positive review. Thanks devs for the detailed post with explanation of what happened - it was interesting to read.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a pretty good game. Many problems still need to be worked out. --It crashes often --I dislike how much of the tech tree is dead space which you have to interact with to advance from one era to the next. AFAIK, the best way to progress through tech involves a lot of "there are 5 worthless techs remaining in this era I'll never use. Which 3 can I get most quickly?" --I dislike how it's not clear how much of an effect each tech has. Instead of saying "your land armies do more damage" maybe…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Can nuke Fr*nce. And Throw in some bio weapons for good measure.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →“They were out-vibed by every team they played… You can’t hero-worship an ICBM, and there’s nothing real in pretending to wear fatigues. For all the goodwill this tournament brought the game of baseball, Team USA sure got none of it on ’em.” www.pinstripealley.com/yankees-edit...
neutral · AI labelView post →The actually gameplay is great, I have some balance concerns (conventional ballistic missiles are absolutely useless and certain builds are just completely impossible) but overall I do enjoy playing it. That said, I legitimately debated whether I was going to recommend this game or not. My main criticism is that this single-player game is basically online-only. The developer will lie to you and say that it only needs to sync on occasion, but I lost internet for literally ten minutes and the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is just awesome its missing one thing.. interactions with different countries. yes it has allies and shared intel but no threatening no shutting down oil or electricity.. maybe add in an interaction menu with different countries.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I picked it up and played for 7 hours straight. This is one of the most fun global RTS I have played. It is just the right amount of micro and auto. It has great gameplay in how it limits weapons and research to a more natural development. But once you break the nuclear seal all hell breaks loose. I have never have more fun playing an RTS and I can not wait to get my friends in on it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →1) Space is hard. It's about the hardest thing humans have done. The first attempts to reach space we're a by-product of the creation of the ICBM. It was a game that only superpower governments could play. The physics has not changed since then. It's still hard.
neutral · AI labelView post →Somehow @robchaney1.bsky.social squeezes in Carol Bellin, Mark Anderlik, Conrad’s drag strip, Meyer Chessin + bike🫡, nuked🥛and climate ⚠️. And: “Children in Lewistown have a playground with a decommissioned Minuteman ICBM next to the swing set.” (1/2) #MTNews #MTPol thepulp.org/montana-nucl...
neutral · AI labelView post →Our War Game and the whole plot about having to stop an ICBM from crashing into your home made me understand what was like for my parents to grow up during the Cold War.
neutral · AI labelView post →ICBM Escalation looks from the outside like a standard strategy game that you can find like sand on the beach in the Steam shop. Whoever overcomes this hurdle, however, is rewarded with one of the best niche titles: a true "last war" simulation in which the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear options is in no way inferior to conventional warfare.It is best explained with this example: As Europe, I had prepared everything at the beginning for a war with Russia... a massive airborne…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you were a defense secretary or minister of war, that's what this game makes you feel like. There are so many options to wage war, stealthy, spec ops, ground, air, naval, underwater, space, nuclear, biological, there's very few limits. With scenarios that even bring historic and theorectical scenarios to light, playing this game gives you so much power with so much consequence. It can be traumatizing to know how much death can happen in this game, but it's also educational at the same time.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Played South America, built up a mighty empire that stretched the Americas tip to tail. Sub-Saharan Africa decides to send puny strat bombers at me. Proceed to unban every weapon in the Geneva convention (I made them agree to ban every weapon). Hit SSA with so many nuclear weapons that the global pollution goes from 60% to 89% in one strike. Proceeds to hit them with the strongest bioweapon in the game. Still come in third place in kills. Good game, would recommend.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
Posts are quoted from public profiles with links to the original. Want yours removed? Contact us.