Twilight Struggle casts players as the United States or the Soviet Union in a contest for influence during the Cold War. Its world map represents the period, and the goal is to build alliances and control for your superpower. Rather than treating the era as a backdrop, the game draws on historical events that shaped its tensions, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and conflicts in the Middle East and Vietnam.
The central decisions involve moving units and exerting influence across the map. Those efforts make the contest about extending a superpower’s reach, while the changing challenges of each session give the same historical setting room for different strategic situations. Events in the game are based on things that actually occurred during the Cold War, linking play to real episodes without requiring every match to follow history in the same way.
Twilight Struggle supports single-player and multiplayer, including online player-versus-player and shared or split-screen PvP. Its asynchronous online support lets multiplayer games proceed without requiring both players to act at the same time.
