The player, controlling Lee Harvey Oswald, is tasked with recreating the three shots fired at Kennedy and gains higher scores the more accurately they line up with the report.

Traffic Games founder Kirk Ewing envisioned a small-scale simulation of a historical event after leaving VIS Entertainment.

He chose Kennedy's killing over the Apollo 11 Moon landing in part due to the high amount of public domain information available on the former.

A team of ten people worked in the game engine of Carmageddon to accurately recreate the event, taking several months each for research and development.

[2] The player controls Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

[3][6] The scene can be viewed from several angles, including from the grassy knoll, the location of the Zapruder film, and a virtual camera mounted to Kennedy's limousine.

Therein, the JFK Reloaded development team reconstructed the site of Kennedy's assassination with accurate object placements and apt weather conditions.

According to Ewing, one aim of the development was to disprove conspiracy theories surrounding the event by displaying that Oswald would have been capable to perform the shooting in the given conditions of that day.

[12] To boost the game's commercial performance, the company held a month-long competition for players to replicate the shooting as accurately as possible.

[9][16] JFK Reloaded was denounced by several public figures: David Smith, a spokesman for Ted Kennedy, stated simply that "It's despicable.

[4] Jefferson Morley, in his editorial for Salon, cited an "undeniable appeal" to the game's re-enactment of the assassination and the "antisocial pleasure" he associated with it.