Barbenheimer (2 Player PastMaster)

New Mexico and Germany, 1945. The Manhattan Project is racing towards the atomic bomb, and two unlikely saboteurs have been sent back to stop it: Barbie and Ken. A two-player game inspired by the summer's Barbie and Oppenheimer double feature. Keon is Barbie, deep undercover in Los Alamos. Tan is Ken, deep undercover in Germany. One of them is all business. The other has accidentally started farming.

The AI runs two parallel adventures simultaneously, and the contrast between players is immediate. The trash talk between timelines is relentless, the question of whether bananas can substitute for a bomb gets a thorough investigation, and at some point someone has to explain to ChatGPT why their saboteur is called Barbie. One player is pushing towards the mission objective. The other appears to have forgotten there is one. Which is which may surprise you.

The Manhattan Project was the most secret and consequential scientific endeavour in history. Los Alamos, New Mexico was its nerve centre, where Oppenheimer assembled the greatest minds in physics to build the weapon that would end the war and reshape global politics forever. In Germany, the Haigerloch "Atomkeller" was the last-ditch site of the failing Nazi nuclear programme. Between them, these two locations determined the fate of the 20th century. We added plastic dolls.