This week, a trio of video game cabinets emblazoned with pixel art of Donald Trump and a number of other government officials’ faces suddenly appeared at the DC War Memorial. Looking at the cabinets from a distance, it’s easy to get the sense that Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell (which you can also play on the web) is just another monumental joke erected by DC-based art collective, The Secret Handshake. But when I got up close and actually spent some time playing the new game, it became obvious that Operation Epic Furious is a scathing commentary that also happens to be a loving tribute to classic RPGs.
In Operation Epic Furious, you control president Trump as he wages war with Iran and attempts to reestablish the US’s access to the Strait of Hormuz. The game opens in the White House where you have to guide Trump through a collection of rooms filled with some of his most notable allies like secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, FBI director Kash Patel, and health and human services secretary RFK Jr. In its opening moments, Operation Epic Furious feels a lot like Nintendo’s early Zelda games where you were meant to explore the map looking for treasure and directions about what to do next. But instead of rupees of small keys to unlock doors, Operation Epic Furious tasks you with finding Kid Rock’s helicopter so that you can fly off and “ROCK Iran back to the stone ages.”
Artistically, there’s an earnestness to Operation Epic Furious that speaks to the fact that The Secret Handshake built this to feel like a genuine game rather than just a glorified joke about the Trump administration. The game has a surprisingly excellent soundtrack that seamlessly shifted from one piece to another as I wandered its pixelated Iran, stumbling upon enemies like schoolchildren and “weak on crime” Pope Leo XIV. It’s filled with NPCs whose dialog speaks to the administration’s real-world chaos. Even the battle system is robust enough to feel inspired by the Final Fantasy and Pokémon franchises.
After taking a few experimental hits, it became clear that no matter how I played, none of the enemies could knock Trump’s political power (visualized as a health bar) down low enough to take him down. For all of its gags, the game never lets you forget that each of its jokes are a snapshot of how much more unhinged the US government has become in recent years.
Epic Furious is absolutely poking fun at Trump and its allies, but its absurd humor is not trying to make light of the real world harms that this administration has caused. It’s funny when Trump learns new skills like Full Pardon after defeating enemies, but the game quickly follows those moments up with drone strikes that obliterate sections of the overworld map.
A fondness for the game’s dark sense of humor is what inspired Katherine, a nonprofit worker originally from Massachusetts, to grab a friend and come down to the Mall to check out Operation Epic Furious in person. Like many people, Katherine first heard about the game when photos of National Guard troops playing it began circulating on social media. She told me that she liked the game’s approach to making fun of the Trump administration, but what she really loved was that the game is a testament to protections afforded to US citizens by the First Amendment.
“This is a free country where we have freedom of expression and the ability to say what we want,” she explained. “That’s one of the reasons why we left England and became a country — to have the freedom to speak critically about religion and politics without having to worry that something would happen to us.”
“Suffering abroad never exists in a vacuum. It will always come back to you and show up in your society.”
The Secret Handshake’s last project, a statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands while frolicking, was briefly on display near the Capitol Building last fall. Alex, an IT specialist from Baltimore, remembered that project well, and it made him want to experience Operation Epic Furious for himself. When I asked Alex how he felt about the macabre energy baked into the game, he said he appreciated how it highlights the suffering that the US inflicts upon other countries while trying to keep its own citizens in the dark.
“The [violence in this game] is no different than the things the US has done all through history,” Alex said. “The more stories and facts about American history that you learn, it’s clear that everything we have here has always been built on the backs of other people’s suffering. But suffering abroad never exists in a vacuum. It will always come back to you and show up in your society if that’s what you’re built on.”
As the sun went down, I expected the number of people coming up to the War Memorial for Operation Epic Furious to dwindle, but that was far from the case. Would-be gamers kept showing up because they wanted to play before the cabinets were taken down, but it also felt like everyone was there because they wanted to experience something with other people.
For me, that something was getting lost in a ridiculous game that explicitly spells out how the sitting president has dragged our country into a new age of ghoulishness and derangement. Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell — which has since been removed from the Memorial and relocated to Busboys and Poets on 14th Street — might not inspire people to take to the streets and demand revolution. But it can absolutely help us chuckle through the horrors.
