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[Poya]

Startup Freak is now Available on Steam!!


Startup Freak is a game that, for better or worse, puts you in the shoes of a budding entrepreneur:

• Come up with a genius (or terrible) software startup idea.
• Hire a talented (or… economical) team.
• Build out your product, focusing on features, tests, performance and security.
• Find investors and get funded.
• Manage infrastructure and data centers.
• Tune your product pricing.
• Exit with a huge pile of cash (or crash and burn. Most likely you’ll crash and burn).

I'm still prototyping the core game mechanics, while exploring ideas for the look and feel of the game. I'll be posting screenshots once I have something more concrete.

Steam // Itch.io // Discord // NewsLetter // Twitch

Some Screenshots:

[Poya]

This week I spent most of my time on an "tech tree" editor for the game, which generates a JSON file to be loaded in the game. I had planned for the player to be able to complete tasks from a huge list (development, marketing, sales, etc), some of which would unlock others. Ultimately though I decided to simplify the whole thing and just boil it down to a much smaller set of tasks that the player can focus on throughout the whole game.

I have described the whole process, as well as some Unity 3D tips in this blog post

[Cranktrain]

Having worked for a start-up for a couple of years before going independent, it's an interesting idea to turn the 'agile' development pattern of a team of programmers into a game. I hope the simulation will mirror some of the real-world team dynamics that exist within actual development teams, things like:

• Developer A knows the code that powers Thing better than Developer B, so Developer A can add extra features to Thing in half the time that Developer B can. But what if Developer A is urgently needed elsewhere? Which inefficiency to choose?
• Developer C has the tendency to estimate their Stories at half as much as they really should do, so you can't really trust how long they say a thing will take.
• Valuable Developer A wants a pay-rise, apparently has a job offer from Competitor. But what about the team morale when one developer is paid so much more than anyone else? Maybe they don't really have a competing job offer?

To me the really interesting part of this game is dealing with all the social-interaction elements, of managing a bunch of fallible human-beings, which by nature are not efficient.

[Poya]

It's interesting you mention that; a few people have said to me that they would be interested in the inter-personal/team dynamic aspects, so I think I do need to focus on that more. I certainly had some things in mind like:

• Team members will have a measure of happiness which affects their productivity. It can dependent on different things like salary, team size, office perks, etc (perhaps on other team members with clashing personalities as you mentioned?)
• Having a lot of members more junior team members will be cost efficient early on but will lead to higher bug rates and slow you down later on.
• There will be an overhead to having a larger team (i.e. mythical man month, etc)

Really like your ideas and will add it to my backlog (see what I did there? ). The tricky thing is going to be making sure I don't make the game too unapproachable for non-developers, and that it doesn't become too much micro-management.

[Cranktrain]

No, that makes a lot of sense. I like the idea that some of the systems only become apparent once the player tries them. Ie; they think they can deal with blockages in development by doubling the development team, only to discover that their burn-rate goes way up, there's a couple of weeks where all the new hires aren't really able to contribute because their finding their feet, and the productivity of the existing developers goes down because they have to help the newcomers.

In order to decrease the micromanagement aspect, you might just want to make the developers mostly autonomous, they themselves pick things from the backlog (based on the priority the player sets) and focus on having the player manage the big-picture bits and pieces. At the same time, it'd be nice to see the little-picture effects of the bigger decisions, like if a developer has to crunch for eight weeks, they might become sick, and disappear for a month. Will the game feature a view of the office, where you can actually watch your developers potter around?

[Poya]

This week I concentrated on getting a basic game loop going, as well as some experimentation with the visuals. I'm not pretty settled on the idea of a side view (rather than a top-down / isometric one) which gives me more direction as I look for an artist for the game. More details about my progress in this post

@Cranktrain: yeah absolutely intend for a visible office and staff going about their daily things. For the most part they'll be on auto-pilot.

At the risk of scaring people away here are some screenshots (all art is strictly placeholder!)

The office:


The "Product Backlog": items the player can be focusing on at any given point, which can be technology, design, sales and marketing, and operations


Playing with some weather effects which I hope will give the game more visual interest

[Poya]

This week I took a bit of a "breadth first" approach to build several of the systems I have in mind for the game. The goal is to have 5 minutes of playable game within the next couple of weeks. You can follow my progress on Trello.

A few items I have worked on this week (more details in this post):

• Randomized candidate generation
• Started investigating personality modeling with HEXACO
• Initial build of the shopping store

Lastly I have been working on some music for the game. Here is a rough cut of one of the tracks ("rough" being the keyword):

OST - It's a Good Day to Code

[Poya]

Made good progress this week. I have started to do some experimentation with a sprite shader that "colors" parts of sprites, essentially allowing me to create variations of the same employee characters. The results are mixed-to-positive. It may still be better to have the eventual artist just pre-render many color variations. This screenshot shows the black & white, and the color mask textures, and then 4 different variations of colors generated by the pixel shader (note, this is a test sprite and will not appear in the game):



Beyond this here are some other updates:

• The "run sprint" / game turn button is now a little more fun (see below | art is not finalized):
• Added email templates with variable substitution. One of the core game mechanics is your in-game mailbox.
• Added CEO creation/customization at the beginning of the game

See this post for full details

[Poya]

My urge to share progress is trumping my wisdom not to show poor placeholder art/UI. Hopefully it won't backfire on me.

This week I have been focusing on the investment "mini game" which is intended to make the funding process in the game more than just a necessary chore. Very briefly, it goes something like this:

• You get 3 randomized investors (there might be future mechanics so the player can influence what investors they attract)
• Player designs a 10 slide "pitch deck" consisting of slides about each of the 4 core areas in the game: Tech, Design, Sales and Marketing, and Operations.
• The slides are shown to the investors who, based on their personal affinity to each of those areas, will show different levels of interest (a graph is used to visualize that). The affinities will be displayed either as pure stats, or as textual profile. I'm still debating that one.
• If any investor reaches some minimum interest level, they will put in an offer based on their affinity and the company stats.
• The player can choose to counter the offer, but there is the potential of scaring off the investor and having them back out.

See this post for details.

As usual the following screenshots use placeholder art/UI/layout and will not appear as is in the final game:


View while the slides are being presented. The projector beam changes color according to the slides. I'll be doing more on this and actually show some slides on the screen.


After slides are shown investors either bale or put in an offer[/list]

[Poya]

Here are some quick updates of the last week or so

Bug Representation:

• Bugs are now introduced as developers spend effort on any task. The rate is dependent on the skill level of the developer, so that higher skilled developers produce fewer bugs over time. I want this to ultimately allow some sort of balance between having more junior developers getting features out the door, and the high rate of bugs associated with that.
• Bugs are treated like any other tasks in the game product/sprint backlog system (like feature development or security), except it "Levels Down" instead of "Level Up" (if that makes sense). It affects sales and churn in a similar way too. Some markets will be more sensitive to bugs than others.
• I'm also toying with the idea of occasional "critical bugs" which have more devastating effects on the company.

Shopping Store:

• Some item types (like employee's computers) will now automatically upgrade when purchased, and apply to future employees too. These items will also be generally placed on the level at fixed anchor points automatically. Remember that I'm trying to make this game less about office micro management.
• For other items I have come up with a "anchor line" system where the player can place them along certain predefined lines in the level (on the floors or walls).

Fixed anchors for automatically positioned items, and line anchors for player customization (screenshot from Tiled).


Items automatically snap to anchors


I have also been looking for art styles that may work for the game. Here are a couple that have caught my eye:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/33540835/Winkreative-Monocle-magazine
https://www.behance.net/gallery/32589513/Vicoli
https://www.behance.net/gallery/30672125/Midnight-Girl

[Poya]

I have been making steady progress with the game over the last couple of weeks. There have been two areas of focus:

1) I have implemented a random event system. Events can be things that affect the whole market (like a war or government policy) as well as things that affect you directly like a security attack. These events can affect various aspects of the customer funnel, i.e. visitors, signups and/or churn, and can last weeks or months. They are primarily communicated through the emails your receive as the player (see below). I have had to make some enhancements to how the email system and email templates work for this purpose.

2) Also just for my own sanity I started work on movement and interaction of employees in the office space. These interactions are purely cosmetic (i.e. they don't affect underlying stats) but they do make the game feel more like... well... a game! In short the employees will occasionally pick an item they want to interact with. Some basic path finding is used for them to reach that item, interact with it, and then return to their workstation where they will interact with their computer. I could only take this so far given the lack of art and animation, hence all the Mona Lisa images and still employees

You can read more details, as well as a few technical articles on my blog

Still working towards that an alpha release so I can get feedback. Finding it difficult to figure out where and how to draw that line...

[Poya]

As I prepare for alpha (or pre-alpha), I have been adding some more content to the game including events and items. I have also been fleshing out the happiness system, which makes use of the HEXACO Personality Model.


Measuring Employee Happiness

Here are the factors I currently measure:

• Interactions: Related to personality of other employees
• Office: Amenities available
• Salary: Current salary as compared to market rate
• Events: Current in-game events that have a direct impact on happiness

In addition, here are the impacts of personality traits:

Honesty and Humility:

• High: Makes others happy; is content with salary
• Low: Makes others unhappy; is not content with salary

Emotionality

• High: Is more affected by others (positive or negative)
• Low: Is less affected by others (positive or negative)

Extraversion

• High: Makes others happy; Larger team makes them happy
• Low: Larger team makes them unhappy

Agreeableness

• Makes others happy
• Makes others unhappy

Conscientiousness

• ?

Openness to Experience

• Change makes them happy
• Change makes them unhappy

New Placeholder Art

I have added several new items with rough art so that alpha testers have something to look at. Here are a couple of examples:

       

[Poya]

I'm hard at work trying to close the feature set for an an alpha (or pre-alpha perhaps) release. I decided to integrate a new system called the "Market Radar". It's my attempt to capture the concept of product-market fit which is very integral to startups, in a more literal (and hopefully fun) way. It may very well be something that just doesn't work but I do want to get back feedback on it. Here is the rough concept:



The idea is that you're trying to approach the market by setting the direction of the product (using the mouse). The catch is that the location of the market is constantly moving, and is not always visible. Certain activities like market research will make the market dot appear for a short while.

I additionally worked on these items:

• Added a "Product Launch" feature which is basically a checklist to guide new players.
• 2 new offices (see screenshots).
• Some experimentation with lighting.
• Integration with Unity Analytics. See my blog about how a messenger pattern really helped with getting this done easily.

Here is a more detailed update


The Shed


The Pallazo

[Poya]

For anyone who has been following this thread, the past 3 weeks have been quite interesting in that I have hit a wall and have subsequently been making some (drastic) changes in direction of Startup Freak. In short I found the core mechanic of "leveling up" various tasks in the 4 core areas (Dev, Design, Sales, Operations) to be somewhat dull and not satisfying enough. I tried to rectify this by adding the concept of milestones and small touches here and there, but it really wasn't enough.

I now have a new "core mechanic" I'm working on which I think is a lot more fun and fits nicely in the game. I'll definitely have some screenshots and description soon. In the mean time you can read about my thinking process over at my blog:

1) Making Games Is Hard and Frustrating
2) Pivoting
3) Saying Goodbye is Hard!...Not Really

[Poya]

I just posted a detailed description of the changes in the core game loop. Here is a summary:

The concept of a backlog and tasks that you level up are still there, however you now "build" your product on what I'm calling a Market Map. Essentially it's a canvas that you are trying to fill with features. Each feature is made up of blocks. Blue block represent technical components, and orange blocks represent design components. Several stats come out of this which affect various parts of the customer aquisition funnel:

- Product Breadth: Number of features. This affects visitors => trial, trial => signup, and churn
- Product Depth: Average number of components in features. This affects trial => signup, and churn
- Product Cohesion: Number of touching points between features. This affects churn.
- Design/Tech ratio: This is the ratio of design to tech components. There is an optimal ratio for each market (game) and one of the player's goal will be to figure out and obtain this ratio.

Bugs are also represented in this new map. There is obviously a lot more to it, explained in my post.

[Poya]

Hi all, posting mostly to say this project is still alive and kicking. I have just been hesitant to post here because of all the placeholder/horrible art in the game, but the gameplay has really come a long way. Here are a few things I have been working on:

• Another pass of the backlog UI. I have gone with a more icon-heavy look which allows me to keep the backlog to 1 screen and hence no scrolling. I have also improved a bunch of things like animated movement of item between the backlog and sprint slots (obviously the icons are placeholders):
  
  
  
• There is now a set of marketing activities which you can put a monthly budget towards. This has changed the way I calculate the number of visitors in your customer acquisition funnel.
  
  
  
• Lots of charts including this one:
  
  

And more. Check out the blog

[Poya]

About 2 weeks ago I released a semi open pre-alpha version of the game, and I have been getting some excellent feedback. The top themes that have been emerging are:

• The tutorials and information structure needs work. The current tutorials are walls of text and don't introduce the mechanics properly.
• The game is too easy. Especially once you hit a positive cash flow, you start making money exponentially and the challenge goes away.
• The feature building mechanic is good but too simplistic. It's not obvious what makes a good feature.

Obviously a lot on my plate to do, but it's great having a more clear direction. I have started focusing on the last item, i.e. really fleshing out and expanding on the "feature building" mechanic. Here is what I'm working on:

• Security Features: These protect their surrounding features. This will determine how likely it is for a security attack to be successful.
• Performance Features: These improve the performance of the other features near them (in a particular direction). This will affect how your user base likes your product.
• There will be a concept of "requested features". These are outlines of features that your users want. They'll be large and take a long time to build, but doing so will have rewards.

You can see the security and perf features below (green and purple tiles):

[Poya]

Big changes to the game continue as I work through the feedback from the pre-alpha. Some highlights:

• Added "Most wanted features". These show up as you research the market. Building them will give an extra boost to signups and retention.
• Completely reworked how the customer funnel works, to simplify things and incorporate the new security/performance features.
• Removed the concept of "trials" to streamline the game more.
• Added seasonal/weather effects for a bit of fun.

 

Requested features

[Poya]

It's been a loooong time since I posted here. In the mean time the game has progressed a lot and has had a face lift. Here is a new office I have been working on in action:



The game feature building system has also changed a lot. In addition to building features and an upgrade sub-system, you can build tests, performance and security enhancements:







And much much more which I'll be posting about soon.

In the mean time the Steam Coming Soon page is up, and you can join the private beta by pre-ordering on itch.io.

[Poya]

My current milestone has been focused around adding more art to the game. We now have art for the servers which sure beats pink boxes:



There are also 20 odd new furniture/office items, including a range of coffee machines, because you can never have too many coffee machines!



I have also started revamping the investment mini-game whereby you pitch your startup to potential investors. More art is needed on that front as well. This is where I'll be putting in my focus next week.

The work continues...