Players are the United States and Soviet Union contesting each other's influence on the world map by using cards that correspond to historical events.

The first game designed by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, they intended it to be a quick-playing alternative to more complex card-driven wargames.

[3] According to its designers, "Twilight Struggle basically accepts all of the internal logic of the Cold War as true—even those parts of it that are demonstrably false.

One scholarly analysis proposed that "[w]hile Twilight Struggle is at its core an area control game, what set its apart from being marked as a Risk clone is the combined effect of material aesthetics and design mechanics meant to embrace a particular point of view tied to the Cold War zeitgeist.

For example, the US player can use two operations points from playing the Soviet event "Fidel", at the expense of its effect: "Remove all US Influence in Cuba.

Each turn, however, players will also lose victory points if they do not conduct military operations (coup attempts or playing war events) at least equal to the DEFCON level.

Victory points are gained or lost on a shared one-dimensional track, and a player who reaches 20 VP in his or her favor wins immediately.

[6] Wargaming hobbyists Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta met in 1998 at a board gaming club at George Washington University.

Gupta suggested the Cold War theme, which fit well for Matthews, who had studied it extensively when majoring in international relations in the 1980s.

The futility of nuclear war, and its relation to conventional military operations, came from the video game Balance of Power as well as Supremacy.

[9] Early versions were more complex and simulation-like, but through playtesting eventually almost every mechanic was abstracted and the event deck made much smaller: "Many clever and interesting ideas were discarded as being contrary to the fundamental guiding principles of the game – fast play, simple rules, and getting a lot of gameplay value out of the cards.

GMT founder Gene Billingsley immediately felt drawn to the theme but had doubts about the game's marketability, and placed it on the company's Project 500 list—it would be published if it achieved 500 preorders.

[13] Both were included with the Deluxe Edition in 2009, in addition to new map art, event text revisions and a set of optional cards.

[14] In addition to a Collector's Edition made with luxury materials, potential bonuses with Digital Edition preorders were a set of new cards and the Turn Zero mini-expansion, which adds an earlier starting point and the possibility that historical events such as the 1945 United Kingdom general election, the Battle of Berlin, or the Chinese Civil War happened differently.

Though it was not an event on the schedule, Twilight Struggle was the talk of the show ... At PrezCon a month later, the dealer sold out in the first few minutes he was open.

"[20] Jon Waddington for Gamers Alliance Report was positive but noted problems with unclear card and rule book texts (in the first edition).

"[20] Game designer Zev Shlasinger commented: "Twilight Struggle gives you a compact history lesson about the Cold War ...

Coupled with that is the game's accessibility and the design's cleverness, all of which make Twilight Struggle stand out among the crowd of recent political wargame releases.

The Deluxe Edition rule book includes an annotated "Extended Example of Play" taken from a Boardgame Players Association play-by-email tournament.

In most of the current competitions, +2 influence points for USA and option cards are used as standard, obtaining a balance very close to 50% between both sides.