You lead a real country. Day to day it runs itself; the hard calls come to you. A term lasts an hour and ends with a verdict on your record. The game saves itself every minute.
Next you pick a country on the map. Every one starts with the government, economy, army and alliances it really has. H opens help during the game.
v0.9.15 · build 3e5fa37 2026-09-29
One project at a time, and costs grow with your economy. At tiers 3 and 5 you pick one of two; the other stays locked for the game.
If they refuse, it comes down to war with just cause or backing down, and backing down costs reputation.
Real disputes are the flashpoints of 2026, Kashmir and the Taiwan Strait among them. With this off, nations only quarrel over what happens in the game. It takes effect in new games.
Say what happened and what you expected instead. The report underneath adds the build number, your browser, your screen size and the last events in the game. Nothing is sent until you press Send; it then reaches the developer by email through Web3Forms. Please leave out personal details.
I read every answer. If you leave an email I reply personally, and I use it for nothing else. Coby.
You're running a real country, with the government, economy, army and alliances it actually has. Most of the work happens without you. What lands on your desk is the hard part: what to give your own people, how to answer a rival, and whether a dispute gets settled or fought over.
Your goal sits in the top bar. In a Term you need to reach the legacy goal before time runs out. Kept promises earn legacy, and so do disputes settled without giving in. At the end the total is multiplied by the state you leave the country in: approval, reputation, the economy, and the allies still with you. Approval is how firmly the country backs you. The four small bars next to it are the people, business, the military and your establishment. Let approval sit very low for long enough and your government falls.
Power at home. Depending on the country, a big move like a war, a tax rise or a large aid package may need a yes from your legislature or the inner circle. You can go ahead after a no, but that starts a fight to remove you. A group that stays unhappy escalates: strikes, capital flight, officers ignoring orders, then worse.
The Situation Room on the right holds everything waiting on you. Demands from your people, business, the military and the legislature land here, along with crises abroad, requests from allies and offers of peace. The game pauses whenever something needs an answer, and every option shows its cost and the odds of how others will react.
Crises climb a ladder over a few minutes: demands, then pressure (sanctions, mobilizing), then the brink (blockades), then a final decision. Your analysts will tell you who has the stronger hand. A war has an aim, which is the terms you were refused, a border region or a new government. Reach it and you can end the war on your terms. The longer a war runs, the more money and support it eats.
Play statistics (the choices you make in the game, with no cookies and no IP address kept) help improve the game. You can turn them off in Settings.
Effective 29 September 2026
Head of State is made by . This policy explains what the game and its website, headofstategame.com, collect, why, and what you can do about it. Questions go to .
What: the map, country, mode and difficulty you choose; the decisions you make in the game, such as how you answer a demand or a dispute; how long you play; your approval and legacy numbers; how far you got in the guide; game errors; and the technical details every web request carries: browser, operating system, device type, screen size, language, the page address and the site that sent you.
How: sent to PostHog, Inc., on servers in the United States. The game uses PostHog's cookieless mode, so nothing is stored in your browser. To count visits, PostHog briefly uses your IP address and browser details to make a code that changes every day. The IP address itself is not stored; at most, PostHog keeps the country and city it estimates from it.
Why: to see which parts of the game work, which confuse people, and where it breaks. In the EU and UK the legal basis is a legitimate interest in improving the game, and you can object at any time by switching statistics off.
Kept: up to one year, then deleted by PostHog.
Turning it off: Settings, Privacy, Play statistics: Off. Nothing more is sent from that moment. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, statistics start off and stay off unless you turn them on.
Before 29 September 2026 (version 0.9.13 and earlier), play statistics used a cookie, kept IP addresses and approximate location, and could record the game screen. Those recordings are deleted after 30 days and the rest after one year.
What: what you type, plus a report the game adds: the build number, the time, your browser's name and version, your screen size, the match settings and the last 25 events of your game. Nothing is sent unless you press Send, and you can copy the report instead.
How and why: sent through Web3Forms (web3forms.com), a service that forwards it to the developer by email, so the problem can be fixed.
Kept: deleted once the problem is dealt with, and at the latest 12 months after it arrives.
What: your two answers, what you type, the country and mode you played, and your email address if you choose to give it. It is sent the same way as bug reports, only when you press Send.
Your email is used only to reply to you. It is never added to a mailing list, sold or shared. The legal basis is your consent, given by typing it in; you can withdraw it by writing to . Survey emails are deleted within 12 months of the reply.
The game keeps your saved game, your settings, sound volumes and a few markers (whether you finished the guide or answered the survey) in your browser's local storage, because the game needs them to work. None of it is sent anywhere. Each site keeps its own copy, so a game saved on itch.io does not appear at headofstategame.com. Abandon in the game menu deletes the save; your browser's site data settings clear the rest.
headofstategame.com, including the game at headofstategame.com/play, is hosted by Cloudflare, Inc. When you visit, Cloudflare receives your IP address and the details every web request carries (the page asked for, the time, your browser and operating system, and the site that sent you) so it can deliver the page and protect the site from attacks. Cloudflare keeps these in its server logs for a limited time under its own privacy policy (cloudflare.com/privacypolicy). The site sets no cookies of its own and uses no Cloudflare analytics. If Cloudflare needs to check that a visitor is not a bot, it may set a short-lived security cookie for that purpose only.
Email you send to an address on headofstategame.com passes through Cloudflare, which forwards it to the developer's inbox.
Fonts and images are built into the game and the website, so they make no other requests. If you play on itch.io, itch.io hosts the game there, and its own privacy policy covers what it collects when you visit.
No data is sold. There is no advertising in the game. If ads are ever added, this policy will be updated first and will name the ad partners.
The game is not made for children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you think a child has sent an email through the survey, write to and it will be deleted.
You can ask what data about you is held, and ask for it to be corrected or deleted, by writing to . Play statistics carry no name, cookie or IP address, so they usually can't be linked back to you; reports and survey answers can be found by the email or text you sent. In the EU and UK you can also complain to your data protection authority.
The developer is in the United States, and the services above store data there. Cloudflare delivers pages from the data centre nearest to you, which may be outside the United States.
If this policy changes, the new version will be in the game and at headofstategame.com/privacy with a new effective date.
Effective 29 September 2026
By playing Head of State or using headofstategame.com you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't play.
Head of State is free to play. owns the game, its code, text and art, except the parts listed under Credits, which belong to their authors. You may play it and share links to it. Please don't copy, resell or republish the game's files without permission.
The game is a simulation made for fun. It is not political commentary, news, or advice of any kind, and it does not state the developer's views.
The game is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, including that it will be free of errors or that your saved games will be kept.
As far as the law allows, is not liable for any indirect, incidental or consequential damages, or for lost data, arising from the game. Total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of what you paid for the game and 50 US dollars.
If you send a bug report, survey answer or suggestion, may use it to improve the game without paying you.
The game and these terms may change. The version in the game and at headofstategame.com/terms applies.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, USA. Nothing in them takes away rights you have under the consumer laws of the country where you live.
Head of State is fiction. It starts from real countries and a simplified picture of the world in 2025 and 2026. From there everything is simulated: the events, decisions, crises, wars and outcomes are made by the game. They do not depict or predict real events, and they do not reflect the policies of any real government or the views of the developer.
No real person appears in the game. The leader you play has no name, and other countries' leaders are not named or shown.
Maps and borders are drawn for gameplay from Natural Earth data and imply no position on the status of any territory or on any disputed border. Where a border is disputed, the game draws it one way so it can be played. That choice is not a claim. Where a capital is disputed, the game uses another major city as the country's seat. On the World map, smaller countries are folded into a neighbour so the map stays playable.
Governments are sorted into a few simplified game types, such as democracy or autocracy, and figures such as army sizes and economies are rough approximations for play. They are not assessments of any real country.
The game starts with the real disputes of 2026 as tensions between countries. You can turn them off in Settings (Real disputes).
Head of State by . All sound and music are made in code.
Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data at naturalearthdata.com (public domain). The borders, cities, rivers and lakes are adapted from it; see the Disclaimer.
Solar System Scope (solarsystemscope.com), based on NASA imagery, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Resized and merged by the three.js project, then converted to the game's terrain colour and relief. The map pictures on headofstategame.com are made from the game's map and carry the same credit.
Simplex noise from webgl-noise by Ian McEwan (Ashima Arts) and Stefan Gustavson, MIT License (below). Mulberry32 random number generator by Tommy Ettinger.
Bricolage Grotesque, copyright 2022 The Bricolage Grotesque Project Authors (github.com/ateliertriay/bricolage). IBM Plex Sans, copyright 2017 IBM Corp., with Reserved Font Name "Plex". Both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (below).
Play statistics by PostHog (posthog-js, Apache License 2.0), loaded from PostHog's servers only while statistics are on. Reports sent through Web3Forms.
Copyright (C) 2011 by Ashima Arts (Simplex noise) Copyright (C) 2011-2016 by Stefan Gustavson (Classic noise and others) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
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