Elbows Up

Canada will defend itself. Elbows up.

Elbows Up is a dice-driven war game in 8-bit pixel art. You command Canada's defence across a series of border battles, played like hockey: three periods a game, sudden-death overtime, first side to five wins. The winner controls North America.

Every roll asks the same question. You split four dice into two pairs. Force decides whether you win the fight. Restraint decides whether civilians get hurt. Put your two sixes on winning, and the town behind the line pays for it. Put them on protecting people, and you may lose the ground.

What you're fighting with

• Six fronts: the Pacific coast, the Prairies, the Ontario corridor, Quebec, the Atlantic and the North. Each has its own animated battlefield and its own rules.

• Three postures: Guerrilla, Hold the Line, or Drop the Gloves.

• Canada's energy exports: keep them flowing, throttle them, or cut the lights out south of the border, and pay for it at home.

• UN allies who arrive slowly, and fastest when the war is going badly.

• A coalition out of Alaska that may not hold together.

• A nuclear option. No one wins if it's used.

What's at stake

Lose a front and French comes down from the signs. You'll watch the language disappear from the game itself as the occupation spreads, and come back when you retake the ground. Lose the war and Canada becomes the 51st state. Win it, and the aggressors stand before an international tribunal. But the tribunal examines everyone's conduct, including yours.

Every war is written down

A ticker from the front tells the story as it happens, newest news first: the sergeant holding the rail yards, the nurse on a third straight shift, the bus of evacuees that made it out. After each game you can write your own dispatch. At the end, save your war record, every game, every roll and every dispatch, as a page you can print.

Details

• A short series: nine games at most, about 30 to 45 minutes.

• Plays in the browser, on desktop or tablet. Mouse, touch or keyboard.

• English, with French throughout.

• Your series saves in your browser between sessions.

Content note: depicts a fictional invasion of Canada, military combat, civilian casualties (in text, handled with gravity), and the threat of nuclear war. No real public figures appear; leaders are referred to by office only.

Credits: Story, rules and writing by Julian Grant. Pixel palette and font from Odiriuss's PixelArtGameOpus engine (MIT licence).

A BITIBITS Game.