Cold Calling

November, 1962: The height of the Cold War. Mere weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new international entanglement is about to go nuclear. As the new White House switchboard operator, it’s your job to make sure long-distance negotiations don’t go sour. Get ready to phone it in.

In Cold Calling, you manage a chaotic, tactile switchboard, routing high-stakes diplomatic calls between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Connect loose wires, use wacky gadgets, and juggle waves of incoming calls punctuated by hilarious exchanges between characters in a globetrotting adventure where your choices affect the outcome of the story. 

GAMEPLAY

Master the switchboard to keep calls on the line:

An arsenal of wacky gadgets.

Use physics-based wires to create paths for your calls, then choose from over two dozen unique gadgets to make your job easier. Find powerful synergies by combining absurd devices like a pirate cannon, a UFO, or…a slice of cheese?

Discover the mysteries of the Time Phone. 

Navigate a hilarious narrative featuring dozens of caricatured real life historical figures, and utilize secret government technology to contact voices from the past (and future) in hopes of steering history away from disaster.

Solve puzzles and unravel a conspiracy.

Follow a masked stranger through classic point-and-click segments, then prepare for some old fashioned sleuthing. Your favorite character has a unique side story to unlock, but whose conversation will you choose to listen in on? Your decisions will lead you to one of eight unique endings. 

PLAY COLD CALLING IF YOU LIKE…

• …Hectic multitasking based challenges under time pressure. (Or not! You can play with no penalties if you’re mainly interested in the story.)

• …Tower defense games. Cold Calling plays similarly in some ways, though with much more active interaction during each wave.

• …Political satire and alternate history stories like Dr. Strangelove and In the Loop.

• …Absurdist humor and a story that could fly off the rails at any moment.

Cold Calling was proudly created with no generative AI.