I built a strategy game you can fight your coworkers in, a few minutes a day

TL;DR: Most strategy games want your whole evening. This one wants about five minutes, twice a day. It runs in your browser while you work. The best part is getting a few people from the office in, so there’s a quiet war going on under the meetings and the coffee runs. It’s free, no download, plays on whatever you’ve got open. Play it in your browser.

Strategy games used to punish you for having a job.

You’d start one. It looked great. Then a week in you’d realise that to keep up you had to be online at 9pm every night, and if you weren’t, someone who was online got a free run at you. Miss two days and you’re behind for good. So you’d quit. Not because the game was bad. Because the game wanted more than you had.

I wanted to play one of these again. I just didn’t have three hours a night anymore.

So I built one for people with a job

Inselnova is a browser strategy game. You run an island. You build it up, gather resources, send out fleets, raid your neighbours, defend against theirs, and join up with other people in alliances.

The difference is the pace. It runs whether you’re there or not. You set things going, close the tab, and they keep happening while you’re in a meeting or making dinner. You come back, see what landed, make your next few calls, and leave again.

Five minutes in the morning. Five after lunch. Maybe a look before bed if you’re into it.

Get your coworkers in

The game is more fun with people you know. And the people you see all day are right there.

Get three or four of you playing on the same world and something good happens. There’s a war going on under the workday. Someone raids your island during the standup. You spend the 11am meeting quietly plotting your fleet while nodding along. You walk past someone’s desk knowing their defences are down and they have no idea you know.

What a day looks like:

• Morning coffee: check what happened overnight, queue a build, send a fleet out.
• Mid-morning: someone in the team chat goes quiet. They’re up to something.
• Lunch: your raid lands. You say nothing. You just smile at them across the room.
• Afternoon: they hit you back. The group chat is now half work, half threats.
• Before you log off: set your defences, line up tomorrow’s move.

None of it gets in the way of the actual work. It just sits underneath it. A slow, ongoing thing between people who’d otherwise only talk about deadlines.

Why it works when you’re busy

• It runs in your browser, and it’s built for your phone. Nothing to install. Open a tab on your laptop at work, pick it up on your phone on the train, it’s the same game. Walking the dog? Load it up, have a play. Just don’t forget the dog.
• It waits for you. Step away for a few hours, even a day, and you come back to something that moved on without falling apart.
• No catching up. When you log in, you can see where things stand at a glance. You’re not penalised for having had a life since this morning.
• It’s free. You don’t need to spend anything to play a full game of it.

Who I built it for

I’m in my 40s. I used to lose whole evenings to games like this and loved it. I can’t do that now, and I don’t think most people can.

So I built the version I’d actually keep playing. One that fits around a job instead of competing with it. Slow enough that you can think, quick enough to check on a break, and better with a few people you know than alone.

If you’ve got a job, a browser tab open, and a couple of coworkers who’d enjoy a quiet war, that’s the whole pitch.

You can play it now. Grab a couple of people from the office and start on the same world. See who’s still standing by Friday.