A new retro-style arcade game called Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell appeared at the D.C. War Memorial on May 12, with President Donald Trump cast as the protagonist and physical cabinets set up where National Guard troops deployed in Washington were later spotted playing. The web version also went live that day, turning the Iran war into an absurd side-scroller in which Trump must gather oil barrels in Iran and make it back to the United States in one piece.
The timing made the joke land harder. The deployment in Washington was costing taxpayers some $1.6 million a day, and the game’s public debut put a satirical counterpoint in front of the same city tableau: soldiers on break, a memorial lawn, and a browser game that treats war like an overheated arcade cabinet. The Secret Handshake, the anonymous group behind it, has a sparse website and little publicly known about it, but the piece arrived polished enough to read like protest art with a quarter-coin sense of humor.
Inside the game, Trump moves through a gaudy political fever dream populated by bosses named Pope Leo XIV, Kash Patel, RFK Jr., Lil’ Marco Rubio, Handsome Zohran and Looksmaxxer Terrorist. One sequence gives Pope Leo XIV a buff that makes him impervious until the player backtracks to the dungeon entrance and prays with Pete Hegseth, which unlocks a spell called 2 Corinthians. That spell strips away the pope’s protection and opens the door to special attacks named Mar-a-Lazer and the Power Grab. Another path features a Strait of Hormuz quest that opens and closes as Trump posts on Truth Social after retreating to a golden toilet with Truth Points.
The game was reported to have been made in just three weeks, and that speed is part of the punch line. It does not try to simulate war so much as collapse it into the language of grievance, branding and online performance, with Trump as both hero and hazard. The design also includes an instant Game Over if the player seeks affection from Melania, a detail that pushes the satire from policy mockery into blunt personal insult.
That mix of ridicule and spectacle is what gives the game its edge. It is not just a browser prank, and it is not merely a cabinet novelty on the National Mall. It is a pointed jab at a president whose Iran policy and Washington deployment are being folded into an arcade where the Strait of Hormuz can shut on a post and reopen on another, and where the final answer to the headline question is plain: the protest is meant to sting, and it does.
For readers looking for the broader cultural frame, the game sits in the same lane as other political and war-themed entertainment pieces that turn conflict into spectacle, from free-streaming war epics to installations that bring satirical combat games onto the Mall.
One of those was Operation Epic Furious installs satirical war games on the National Mall, while another war title that drew attention was I Player adds The Promised Land, a 2023 war epic to stream free.
What comes next is simple enough. The cabinets remain at the D.C. War Memorial for now, the browser game is already out, and the only real unanswered question is how long the Secret Handshake can keep a piece this pointed in public view before it becomes part of the city’s political background noise.
