The Outpost Arcade
Every game here builds one skill you can use in real life — not “awareness.” Every answer carries its citation. Nothing is for sale, nothing tracks you between sessions, there is no streak to protect, and each one plays offline once it loads.
New in the arcade
Run the country for ten years under one of five economic systems. Every system starts from the same three meters, each is described in its own advocates’ words, and each decides for itself what counts as success — so the same ten years can be a win under one rulebook and a loss under another. The game issues no verdict.
Play it →Every game plays fully in this browser — no app, no account, no network. Confirmations arrive as a buzz, a sound, or a flash, whichever your device can do.
These are separate games, not the same game with bigger type. Your choice is remembered on this device only.
Real games — 2D real-time, simulation, board and RPG. Rules you can lose against honestly, never a memorised sequence.
Tilt your phone to hold the beam. Pick the check that actually fixes it.
What you'll be able to do: Identify the specific constitutional check that answers a specific overreach, and predict which branch can actually stop it.
Tilt sensor optional — arrow keys and buttons do the same job · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Balance of PowersPick an economy. Try to make it work. Find out what it makes hard.
What you'll be able to do: Run a budget under a hard constraint, predict which obligation fails first when you cut it, and identify the specific weakness of the economic system you chose.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · about twenty minutes · C3 · NCSS
Play Run the StateYou are a bill. Almost none of you make it. Find out where you die.
What you'll be able to do: Trace a bill through both chambers, predict which stage kills it, and identify the specific vote threshold each stage requires.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Bill RunSix things need money. Money arrives slowly. Something is going to break.
What you'll be able to do: Run a public budget in real time, predict which deferred obligation fails first, and calculate why fixing a thing late costs several times what fixing it early would have.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play The LedgerSame voters. Same votes. Draw the lines and change who wins.
What you'll be able to do: Draw equal-population contiguous districts, predict the seat outcome from a map, and identify packing and cracking in a district plan you did not draw.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Draw the DistrictsBlock what the right forbids. Let through what it allows. Getting the second one wrong costs you just as much.
What you'll be able to do: Distinguish a government action the Constitution bars from one it permits, under time pressure, and identify the decided case that settles it.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Rights ArenaNot what order. How far apart.
What you'll be able to do: Locate a founding or constitutional event on a scaled timeline, calculate the interval between two of them, and predict how long a change to the Constitution actually takes.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Timeline ArchitectFind the state. Then find the government that actually handles it.
What you'll be able to do: Locate any state on a map of the union, route a real public problem to the level of government that actually handles it, and identify which level most of daily life is decided at.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Map the NationThe system is set. It is not serving you. There is no set path out — that is the point.
What you'll be able to do: Build a coalition from a divided public, choose among documented methods of civic pressure, hold unity under deliberate attempts to split it, and calculate why nonviolent campaigns succeed more often than violent ones.
Touch or keyboard · turn-based · offline · about twenty minutes · C3 · NCSS
Play The Long HaulBind the breach with law. The type chart is the Constitution.
What you'll be able to do: Match a rights violation to the constitutional provision that actually reaches it, calculate when a case is weakened enough to bind, and identify the decided case behind each instrument.
Touch or keyboard · turn-based · offline · about eighteen minutes · C3 · NCSS
Play WRITFour players, one board, and a republic that keeps changing the rules under you.
What you'll be able to do: Predict how a procedural rule change redistributes advantage, calculate a position on a board where the rules mutate mid-game, and identify which historical compromise a rule is modelled on.
Touch or keyboard · turn-based vs three CPU delegates · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Convention PartyYou don't pick your system. You don't pick where you start. Twenty-four years — make do.
What you'll be able to do: Reason about economic systems from the inside rather than the outside: compare how different allocation mechanisms handle the same shock, distinguish the effect of a system from the effect of a starting position, and notice how much of an outcome was decided before the first move.
Touch or keyboard · turn-based · offline · about fifteen minutes · C3 · NCSS
Play The DrawFirst to five. The physics is how you win.
What you'll be able to do: Predict where a thrown ball lands from its release angle and speed, calculate the best angle for a target above your hands, and read your own shooting percentage as the small sample it is.
Touch, keyboard or tilt · real-time · buzz, sound or flash · offline · NGSS · Outpost Education Library
Play The ArcBuild a plate. Watch what happens inside, not outside.
What you'll be able to do: read what different foods do in the hours after eating them, and tell a settled finding from a contested one
Touch or keyboard · nothing scored · offline · put it down any time · Every mechanism carries a public-health source you can open. · Nothing here is a prediction about you. · Nothing here shows or discusses a body.
Play What a Meal DoesPick a plant and a spot. Find out what it needs before you buy the seed.
What you'll be able to do: work out whether a plant will do well in a particular spot, and why a first garden usually fails
Touch or keyboard · nothing scored · offline · put it down any time · Every figure is one your seed packet also carries. · It will not guess your frost date. · It does not promise a harvest.
Play Grow SomethingA stack of filings and a question. Work out what they actually establish.
What you'll be able to do: read a disclosure record for what it does and does not show, and stop where the evidence stops
Touch or keyboard · nothing scored · offline · put it down any time · Every entity in every case is fictional — a puzzle whose answer is a verdict about a real person is not one we will build. · Every filing type, deadline and limitation is real. · Nothing scored, nothing kept, nothing compared.
Play The RecordCard-and-answer practice, not arcade games. These drill the Academy's units and are shelved here as Academy material.
Which branch actually holds this power?
What you'll be able to do: Identify which branch of the federal government holds a specific power, so you can find the office that can actually act.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Branch CheckThe right office, first try.
What you'll be able to do: Route a real problem to the level of government that actually holds the authority to fix it, instead of complaining to an office with no power over it.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Who Do I Call?Concentration, but the pairs are an office and the thing it actually controls.
What you'll be able to do: Match a public office to the specific lever it controls, so you can locate the person who can move a decision.
Touch or keyboard · shake optional · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Power PairsWhich amendment is doing the work here?
What you'll be able to do: Identify which constitutional amendment protects a right in a real-life situation, so you can name the protection you are relying on.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Rights CheckCan this be checked, or is someone just telling you how to feel?
What you'll be able to do: Distinguish a checkable factual statement from an opinion or an unsourced claim, and name the source that would settle it.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · AASL · C3 · CCSS
Play Fact or ClaimPrimary, secondary, or nothing at all — rank the evidence like an archivist.
What you'll be able to do: Distinguish primary sources from secondary sources from unsourced claims, so you can trace any statement to the strongest available evidence.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · AASL · C3 · CCSS
Play Source CheckOwn it, or owe it? Most people never sort their own life this way.
What you'll be able to do: Sort real financial items into assets and liabilities using the standard definitions, so you can calculate your own net worth.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · CEE · Jump$tart
Play Asset or Liability?Half of what people quote at each other isn't where they think it is.
What you'll be able to do: Trace a famous American line to the document it actually comes from, so you can read the original instead of arguing about a paraphrase.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Which Document Says That?Put the steps in order — then find where bills actually die.
What you'll be able to do: Trace a bill through the real legislative stages in order and locate the stage where a specific bill stopped moving.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS
Play Bill PathElection night is the middle of the story, not the end. Put the real steps in order.
What you'll be able to do: Trace a ballot through the real counting, canvass, and certification steps in order, and locate where a reported result becomes an official one.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCSS · AASL
Play How a Vote Becomes a ResultFund everything. You can't. Now choose.
What you'll be able to do: Calculate trade-offs in a public budget under fixed revenue and legally required minimums, and explain which service absorbed the cut.
Touch or keyboard · buzz, sound or flash · offline · C3 · NCTM · CCSS
Play The Budget TableThese are enforced in code, not in a promise: every game is verified against the design gates in apps/api/src/games_core.py before it can be registered.
