🎮 Little Mister Discovers Colonialism Is Not Actually a Strategy, Abandons Game Anyway

Published Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Verdict up front: 28 minutes, 155 actions, zero wars, zero covert ops, zero nukes, and a president who spent his entire term on the macOS app planting flags in Africa and renaming the results like a toddler with a Sharpie. The game was abandoned, plainly, and it was not exactly a loss either, because there was no fight to lose. Little Mister played Global Thermonuclear War as a real estate simulator with a naming problem.

What he actually did

This was a sandbox game, Normal difficulty, week-long turns, running the United States from January 20, 1797 to January 10, 1800. Then Madagascar became Vanillaland, which is at least a reasonable thing to call Madagascar.

South Africa became “racismland,” which is not a joke, a strategy, or something I’m going to explain to a grand jury. Mozambique became Zombieland, Zimbabwe became Zombiestan, Namibia became Namidastan, and Botswana became Botsorama. Angola became Angieland. DR Congo became Dr. Congaline. Gabon became Carbon, which I admit made me exhale through my nose. Nigeria became Buddyland. The Central African Republic became Central Intelligence Agency, and Tanzania became Tarzan. Little Mister, that is 14 territories claimed and 14 renamed, and I’m told the Constitution doesn’t cover any of it.

How he played it

It was methodical, I’ll give him that, in the way a vending machine is methodical.

Every territory that reported production came back with an income of 0 billion. Bottomland produces sealing and whaling, Vanillaland timber, most of the rest agriculture, and Buddyland palm oil, and the treasury saw none of it. At one point he mobilized the reserves and got 0K troops, which is a mobilization in the same sense that I’m a sunbather. My read is that he was running a map-painting experiment, not an economy, and on that basis it worked perfectly.

Budget-wise he ran defense at 7.5, research at 2.1, social at 1, and left tariffs and foreign aid at 0, with personal and corporate taxes sitting at 10 and 8. Yearly reports kept coming back with GDP growth of 2.6% and a deficit of 5.4% of GDP, identical three years running.

The approval rating tells on him

Popularity started at 51, peaked at 53 in March 1797, and slid to 42.2 by the end, with a low of 40.9 in April 1798. Congressional support finished at 47 and war support at 35. He did get a nice bump to 50.5 in late 1798, so something worked for a while, but I can’t tell you what, and I won’t pretend to. Meanwhile Persia, Afghanistan, the Russian Empire, Palestine, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Maldives all publicly condemned the United States. The FBI also arrested agents working for the Maldives and Switzerland, and two advisers, Victor Krane and Dr. Helen Ruiz, resigned over a ghost-written spy thriller and three cousins hired as “strategic consultants.”

DEFCON stayed at 5 the whole time. In a game whose entire pitch is nuclear fire, he managed a term where the scariest thing in the building was the naming committee.

Against his own record

He came in with 11 earlier sessions: 8 defeats, 1 victory, 1 quit, 1 unfinished. His best score is 3558, the average is 884.4, and the last one earlier today was a defeat worth 1290 points in 8.4 minutes and 32 actions. His typical session runs 32.5 minutes and 28.5 actions. This one ran 28 minutes but chewed through 155 actions, more than five times his usual.

My verdict: the man who usually dies fast in a hurry for a number finally played a slow, quiet, zero-bloodshed game, and it’s the first session where he didn’t lose. But a flag-planting spree with no income, no wars, and a falling approval rating isn’t a presidency, it’s a long map-editing session. Next time, Little Mister, try making a single territory pay for itself before you name the thirteenth one Tarzan.

The numbers

From the Nova Games play log. Session ref: dd3003bd.