PAX South: Catching up With Cold War Conspiracy Thriller Phantom Doctrine

Information is everything, time is running out, and you can’t trust anyone, especially your own people. Welcome to the alternate history of Creative Forge Games’ Phantom Doctrine. Set in 1983 during the Cold War, the game tasks players with overthrowing a global conspiracy committed to world domination. Just remember, the enemy is always closer than you think.

The PAX South demo began in the heart of our secret organization’s hideout. Here we can plan missions, assemble information, and train agents. We’ll have to be careful though, if our position is compromised we’ll need to relocate. A costly venture, but the only way for us to stay one step ahead of our adversaries.

For a turn-based tactics game, Phantom Doctrine offers a surprising amount of role play narrative. The game’s plot is anchored by chillingly relevant historical events. The result is a tense atmosphere of paranoia and intrigue.

One of our agents has blown his cover during a recent mission. He is sent to receive a new identity and appearance. We’ve invested too much in his training to cut him loose now. As the leader of The Cabal, your agents are your greatest asset, but also your biggest potential weakness.

Scanning the investigation board I see that our interrogation of the captured enemy operative has yielded results. I could assign one of my agents to review the information, but I prefer to handle it myself. You can never be too careful. As for the enemy operative? She’ll make an excellent candidate for our secret mind control experiments.

Mission Tactics

Finally, after scouting ahead, we’re ready to begin our mission. Things go smoothly at first, the infiltration team has bypassed security and begun closing on the target. We encounter the newly freed enemy operative from earlier and activate her trigger phrase, turning her to our side. Unfortunately, we learn the hard way that we’re not the only one’s who’ve been experimenting with brainwashing. One of our agents shoots another in the back alerting the guards. Now it’s a race to the extraction point. We can only hope what we’ve done here today will turn the tide in our favor.

Phantom Doctrine promises over 30 hours of tactical strategic gameplay. The modular campaign features generated names and backgrounds for agents as well as algorithmically populated maps and randomized intelligence snippets to unlock. This leads to markedly different experience each time you dive in. Look for it on PC and consoles later this year.