PLAYTESTV1.2 · BUILD aeeaceb 2026-10-20
Play. Title screen: Before This Decade Is Out, a decade in four endings. 1957 to 1969. You run the program. The President runs you. A full Moon over the launch pad at night.
PLAY THE DEMO

Free, in your browser, on a computer or a phone turned sideways. Your run saves as you go.

1957 – 1969 · YOU RUN THE PROGRAM · THE PRESIDENT RUNS YOU

October 1957. Sputnik is overhead, and the program is yours.

Pick the crews. Fight Congress for the money. Keep the President on side. Read the cables out of Moscow and decide which ones to believe. Then, in July 1969, decide what is said on the Moon.

TWELVE YEARS · SIX ACTS · 48 QUARTERS

The game moves three months at a time. Every quarter goes the same way.

  1. 1 READ

    The briefing: headlines, a cable on Moscow, your five numbers.

  2. 2 DECIDE

    Answer the cards on your desk. Some effects stay hidden until they matter.

  3. 3 ROOMS, IF YOU LIKE

    Two visits: the Oval Office, Mission Control, the test stand, the bar.

  4. 4 END QUARTER

    Rockets fly, tests pass or fail, and Moscow makes its move.

  1. The Sputnik Night card on your desk, October 1957: a man at a window at night and three choices of who you are, the engineer, the Air Force general or the administrator.

    ACT 0 · PROLOGUE

    1957

    SPUTNIK NIGHT

    A beeping sphere crosses the sky over Washington every 96 minutes, and your phone rings at 2 a.m. First you choose who you are: the engineer, the Air Force general or the administrator. Each one arrives with a secret, and it comes out if you get careless.

  2. The First Seven: ten astronaut portraits in slide mounts, three of them marked FLIGHT, with each one's pilot, nerve, engineering and charm scores.

    ACT 1 · CATCH-UP

    1958–61

    THE FIRST SEVEN

    Ten files on the desk, and three of them fly. Two came from a clinic in Albuquerque, and the Vice President's office has already called twice. In April 1961 the headline depends on what you did in March. Then Kennedy asks for something he can win.

  3. The Cabinet Room at night, October 22, 1962: four men at the table, maps on easels. Kennedy says the Air Force wants the Cape, every pad and tracking station, starting tonight.

    ACT 2 · ORBIT

    1961–63

    OCTOBER

    You choose how to get to the Moon and put a man in orbit. Then the Cabinet Room at two in the morning, maps on easels, the air blue with smoke, and the Air Force wants the Cape. A year later the phone rings with engines behind the voice.

  4. The dossier on Mission Control's big board: eight suspects on index cards, each with a job, a city, a habit and a tell, some lines ticked and crossed.

    ACT 3 · RENDEZVOUS

    1964–66

    THE LEAK

    Gemini flies two at a time, so pick pairs who can stand each other. Then a cable from Helsinki: a Saturn drawing on a desk in Podlipki, with a coffee ring on it. Yours do too. Somebody in your building is talking. Eight folders, one mole.

  5. Christmas Eve 1968: the Earth rising over the lunar surface. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Apollo 8, lunar orbit, 24 December 1968.

    ACT 4 · FIRE

    1967–68

    PLUGS-OUT

    Pad 34, a Friday in January. Hatch sealed, three men on their backs. Whether it burns can come down to an unsigned memo that crossed your desk earlier: The hatch opens inward. The cabin is pure oxygen. I am not sleeping. Get past it, and Christmas Eve is spent in lunar orbit.

  6. Powered descent, July 20: the guidance computer shows a 1202 alarm, the master alarm is lit, and the crew's heart rates sit under their portraits. Continue or abort.

    ACT 5 · GO

    1969

    1202

    Slayton brings the chalkboard into your office: three names, and everything they think of each other in chalk. The President wants promises. Moscow may have a rocket on the pad. Twelve minutes into the burn, six thousand feet up, the computer throws an alarm nobody has seen since March.

The lunar surface in July 1969: the lander, an astronaut beside the flag, the crew's portraits and three choices for the first words.
JULY 20, 1969

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

The ladder has nine rungs, and six hundred million people are watching the bottom one. There are four endings, and one way to get fired before you get there.

PLAY THE DEMO Free, in your browser. A full run takes about an hour, and it saves as you go.

THIS IS A PLAYTEST

Every playtester so far has been an AI agent, or me. You'd be one of the first people to play it.

The demo keeps an anonymous record of each run: how far it got, how long it took, what was chosen and how it ended. No names, no cookies, no ads. It comes to me, and I use it only to tune the game.

Stop whenever you like. CONTINUE on the title screen picks your run back up in this browser.

TELL ME HOW IT WENT

ABOUT

Jack Casady drawn as a portrait in the game: dark swept-up hair, a full beard, a wide grin, a light blue open collar and a navy blazer, in a cardboard slide mount.

I'm Jack Casady: a marketer who can't really code, a history nerd, and a board-game player with no time for board games right now.

I designed Before This Decade Is Out: the rules, the story and how every screen looks, in a design doc that grew to 48,000 words. Claude built the game from it. I played every build and sent back notes, mostly between nap times.

JACK ON LINKEDIN

ALSO BY JACK

The Long Trail: a free browser game. Oregon Trail, but for your money. A covered wagon below green mountains.

THE LONG TRAIL. Oregon Trail, but for your money: from your first real paycheck to the finish line, one decision at a time. Free in your browser, about five minutes.

PLAY THE LONG TRAIL