What the desktop client adds

A House Divided Desktop wraps the same game you play in a browser. It does not change any game rule, and it is not a separate version of the game — the web app runs inside the window, against the same account and the same world.

What it adds is everything a browser tab cannot do: staying out of the way while still keeping you informed.

Pop-out windows#

Any of these can be opened as its own resizable window, so you can watch one part of the game while working in another:

Each preset is a singleton — opening it a second time focuses the window you already have rather than making a duplicate.

All windows share one login session, so you are signed in everywhere at once and never have to re-authenticate per window.

Mini mode (picture-in-picture)#

Mini mode is a compact always-available status view. It polls a small set of views — elections, a country snapshot, corporation data, a live elections feed, and a custom view — and shows just the numbers.

It is the answer to the real problem with a turn-based game that runs on an hourly clock: you want to know when something happens without keeping a full browser window open all day.

Tray and native notifications#

The client sits in your system tray and raises native OS notifications for game events, including:

• Turn complete
• Election started, and election resolved
• Bill voted, and bill enacted
• Campaign updates
• Action points refreshed
• Poll results
• Achievements unlocked

Four of these are flagged urgent, which surfaces them more insistently.

Notifications only fire when the main window is not focused. If you are already looking at the game, it does not interrupt you to tell you about it.

Global keyboard shortcuts#

Shortcuts work even when the app is not focused, which is configurable. The defaults:

The navigation shortcuts cover the core action loop — campaign, fundraise, poll, advertise — deliberately, since those are the actions you repeat most.

All shortcuts are rebindable.

The Navigate menu#

The app menu knows about your character. It pulls a manifest from the game covering your country, your corporation and your unread counts, and refreshes it on a focus-aware interval — every 30 seconds while focused, every 60 unfocused — as well as whenever you restore or focus the window.

That is why the Navigate menu reflects where you actually are in the game rather than a fixed list of links.

Offline action queue#

The client is a thin client: game actions are executed by the web app in the window, not by the desktop app. The action queue is a relay — it persists actions you take and hands them off, so a brief connection drop does not silently lose what you did.

What this means in play#

• You do not have to keep the game open. Tray plus notifications plus mini mode covers staying informed.
• Notifications respect your attention. They never fire while you are looking at the game.
• Pop-outs beat tab-switching. Watch a live election while running your campaign in the main window.
• Learn the four action shortcuts. Campaign, fundraise, poll and advertise are the loop; the shortcuts remove the navigation from it.

See also#

• Desktop client architecture — how this is built, for contributors