Red Pencil Games
An independent studio making strategy games about history, starting with Crown & Ballot.
Why a red pencil?
For most of the last two centuries, war was planned in coloured pencil. Staff officers marked their maps with double-ended red and blue pencils, one colour for each side, and redrew the lines as reports came in, the same job a Crown & Ballot player does every turn.
The red pencil is also the editor's: the one that crosses out what doesn't work until what's left reads well. We hold the game's writing to that, because a history game is only as good as the history it tells you.
How we make games
Real weight. A decision should land as hard as it would have in history: no more, no less.
Fair to the player. Realism is not the same as pessimism: when your plan works, the game should say so.
Readable history. Prose you would want to read in a book, not a stream of headlines.
Runs anywhere. A browser game for ordinary computers, with nothing to install and no settings to tune.