COLD
ALCHEMY
· Games ·
Transformation through Play  ·  Est. 2025

Where Conflict Becomes Understanding

Cold Alchemy Games designs tabletop and experiential games that transform historical complexity into lived experience. From wargames to classroom simulations, we forge play from raw ideas.

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Featured Works
Available Now

The Long Thaw

A tabletop negotiation simulation set across the frozen geopolitics of the Cold War. Two to six players navigate proxy conflicts, intelligence operations, and back-channel diplomacy to avoid — or engineer — catastrophe.

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In Development

Crucible

A two-player asymmetric strategy game of elemental transformation. One player commands the forces of Order — rigid, powerful, slow to adapt. The other wields Flux — volatile, unpredictable, and capable of wholesale reinvention.

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Coming Soon

Iron Meridian

A hex-and-counter wargame tracing the turning points of the Eastern Front, 1941–1944. Operational-level decisions, supply chain management, and the brutal arithmetic of attrition — rendered in the Cold Alchemy tradition of historical fidelity.

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Historical Depth

Every game begins in the archive. We research primary sources, consult specialists, and stress-test mechanics against the record before a single card is printed.

Lived Experience

Play is a form of empathy. Our designs put players inside decisions, not above them — foregrounding consequence, ambiguity, and the fog of the moment.

Elegant Systems

Complexity lives in the world, not the rulebook. We strip mechanisms to their essential grain — so the friction you feel is historical, not procedural.

From The Lab

Design in the Open

The Cold Alchemy Lab is where we think out loud — sharing prototypes, design diaries, and the questions that don't yet have answers. If you want to understand how games are made, or shape what we build next, this is where to start.

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