The Roaring and the Desperate: Between the Wars

The Roaring & The Desperate: The Complete Saga is a sweeping, choice-driven historical simulation that immerses students in the contradictions of American life from 1919 to 1939. Rather than treating the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression as separate units, this game shows how boom and collapse were inseparably linked, and how ordinary people experienced both extremes.

Students choose from five deeply researched perspectives: a World War I veteran pulled into Prohibition crime, a Southern sharecropper migrating north during the Harlem Renaissance, a member of the Osage Nation targeted during the oil murders, a suffragist navigating Wall Street and the stock market, or a teenage drifter riding the rails during the Depression. Each path is grounded in authentic historical detail, original narrative writing, and real economic and social systems.

The game blends rich storytelling with original arcade-style mini-games that simulate real pressures of the era: bootlegging runs, jazz performance, stock speculation, Dust Bowl escape, and survival against railroad guards. Students must make decisions under uncertainty, face consequences that mirror historical reality, and confront the idea that success in one decade often became disaster in the next.

An integrated archival database allows students to research vocabulary, people, events, and slang from the era in real time, reinforcing literacy and inquiry without breaking immersion. The Roaring & The Desperate is not about memorizing facts. It is about understanding risk, inequality, opportunity, and survival during America’s most volatile decades.

You will receive a game guide with a teacher's guide, a student worksheet, and a direct link to the online game for sharing with your students. If you are a teacher and are worried about the game being blocked by your school's server, contact us; there are two easy ways to make the game available besides the direct link.

One license per educator.