The first day of developing is about to wrap up for me, but let me give a short synopsis of what I am working on. The theme is ‘You are the monster’, which of course lends to a lot of possibilities, primarily involving, well, monsters. I like to think I got a bit more creative. In plenty of media it is the large corporation that is depicted as a monster, the massive, soulless companies that care not for its workers and that care even less about those that get in the way of their profits. To many, they are monsters. And in this game, you play one such monsters.

So the idea of the game is that you get a budget that just isn’t enough to buy up all of the houses, so you will have to turn to playing dirty tricks in order to succeed in turning yet another lively neighbourhood into a concrete jungle. The game reveals a neighbourhood of a varying amount of houses, all for sale. More or less. You see, people don’t always like to just move out, so you will have to convince them to sell, one way or another.

Home owners all are a random combination of names (both first and last names), personalities and household types. Based on the latter two, the price of the home and the willingness of the owner to sell will be adjusted. Further actions in the game will also influence these two values – overpaying a lot on a home will increase the price on all other prices, while the appearance of construction sites may increase the willingness of an home owner to sell. Certain actions, such as deceive and negotiate may lower the price, while threatening and muscle may improve the willingness of the owner to sell. Of course these all have a chance at backfiring and causing the direct opposite. Then there is also the way of the lawsuit; expensive ways of getting homes, but not always guaranteed to succeed – and will cause a lot of bad PR. Remember, there will be a score at the end, and if your PR is too low, you may just discover the termination of your contract instead. Because that’s the world of the corporation: perform, or get out.

Progress is good and I am really excited about it. I do worry a bit about how I am going to fix the art, but we’ll see. I’m sure I can make something work. See you tomorrow for another update.