The most addictive and thought-provoking game I've played in a long time.

The Founder

It's a satirical game about running a tech startup, and I'm enjoying it like a nerd reading a great sci-fi book and a teenage girl playing Farmville at the same time.

Of course because this game is about the immorality of the whole thing, when I first started playing last night I tried to subvert the system and run an ethical company. I named it Fyzzlr. I paid and treated employees well and refrained from any unethical behavior like lobbying and astroturfing. But not too far into the game I hit a difficulty wall...or more like an overhanging difficulty cliff. The competition was getting stiffer and I was struggling to survive, treading water. This approach wouldn't work. I abandoned the attempt. Fyzzlr had Fyzzld.

So this morning I decided to try again running a nasty evil company. EvilCorp is a go-to classic name. I did awful things and covered them up where necessary. And holy hell, the game has become very fast-paced in figuring out what to do with all this money - you want to spend as much as you can by the end of the year to stay only just above your profit goal for the year, to keep your +15% profit goal for the next year from increasing too much. You can spend it on acquisitions, research, lobbying, and ridiculous opulent high-tech office perks. It's a nonstop parade of laughs as you unlock perverse new sci-fi technologies and business opportunities. EvilCorp is already bigger than anything that currently exists in real life, it owns its own seasteading nation and is working toward exploring and terraforming other planets because Earth isn't big enough for EvilCorp anymore.

Gotta go and get things done now, I spent the whole morning and a good chunk of the afternoon on this thing.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Is this a board game, or an online game?

In reply to SVreX:

Click the link and it will readily become apparent.

Yet another game that I can't figure out how (or why) to play. I'm beginning to think it's me and not the gaming industry.

thanks. I was planning on getting things done this weekend. Not anymore.

I gave it a go.

Patent Trolls are KILLING me. I can't ever beat them. What's the trick?

Osterkraut wrote: I gave it a go. Patent Trolls are KILLING me. I can't ever beat them. What's the trick?

In general you need to put A LOT of your workforce behind it (and as early as possible), same with factory suicides and sexual harassment suits. There are two bars shown below the task name in the task view, one is a clock showing how much time has elapsed and one is a target showing how close the task is to completion. If the clock bar fills up before the target bar, you fail, so keep a close eye on those.

Just got back to playing and I'm worried that I'm running out of things to spend money on. I'm making it way faster than I can spend it on anything but buying out major competitors (which I don't have nearly enough for yet), and I don't want next year's target to jump too much.

Edit: Oh I'm screwed, got more than 1B in profit in the last week of December and I'd need 1.6B to buy the cheapest competitor and still hit the profit target. Everything else I can buy is in the low millions.

Edit2: OK the board was happy enough with that big profit that I've coasted for 2 years of profit target misses and the board is still "ecstatic." Now have a Mars colony and geoengineered arctic base running and have invented a warp drive. Should hit the profit target this year (2008).

Whoa things are really moving now. I have an extrasolar branch office, have contacted an alien civilization, and have mastered cloning and have a clone working for me now. The game's getting a bit silly. It felt really dark just as I surpassed where Google is IRL.

Edit: I also have artificially intelligent robots working for me now. They're better than most humans and have low operating costs. Might as well go for an all-robot workforce huh?

Edit2: OK I've nearly finished the game now. All research tasks are complete. The home office workforce is mostly robots. Only one special project remains, and it is the task that ends the game, it requires me to save $7b to create some godlike AI.

Oh BTW forgot to mention that EvilCorp has defeated death itself.

Whoops it actually takes $700B to finish the game - that's twice the value of "Kougle." I'm barely 1% there. I don't want to see the end that badly. In the meantime things are pretty laid back at EvilCorp, for the remaining humans who can appreciate that concept. There are apparently no new products to make. They can be made, they're just not very profitable. There's just the occasional scandal to be wiped out with a speed that would make a tinpot dictator blush.

So the remaining options are:

1. Abandon the game
2. Force the company to collapse
3. An insane amount of grinding

I'm leaning toward #2.

So, the creators of this game have something to say huh?

If I made this game, naming the company evilcorp would be a cheat code for god mode.

Currently in a loop of being hit by patent lawsuits and coming up with projects that make millions every year. Because of the lawsuits I constantly have negative multiple millions of dollars. So I can't spend any of what I make so the board sees the 2 mil I made that year and keeps expecting me to make more millions.

Beat it.

Worst ending ever. Don't even bother.

So real life.

Osterkraut wrote: Beat it. Worst ending ever. Don't even bother.

Whoa, how did you get past the rut I fell into and make $700B? It seems that you can only make a few tens or maybe hundreds of millions with each new product after you've innovated every possible product combination.

I can't even get my company created?

ugh spend to long playing that this morning

Grtechguy wrote: I can't even get my company created?

It's pretty straightforward, the game walks you through everything. Maybe your game isn't loading properly. I've noticed that it requires HTML5 storage to run.

I'm getting early on and my competitors have products that are WAY more powerful in the market than mine. I'm really not sure what to do. Do I throw all the employees available onto one new product? Or do I have multiple teams release multiple products?

Beer Baron wrote: I'm getting early on and my competitors have products that are WAY more powerful in the market than mine. I'm really not sure what to do. Do I throw all the employees available onto one new product? Or do I have multiple teams release multiple products?

Keep the number of simultaneous tasks to a minimum and throw as many employees at a product as possible. Product power is determined by the number and skill of employees working on the product plus any research projects you've done that boost product stats.

Also be sure to open lots of branch offices as soon as you can and assign them to the products too. Just beware that the game usually throws scandals at you as soon as you tie up your entire workforce.

Edit: Also, advertise more.

Don't you children have enough video games with which to while away the hours? Get back to work!

Well... this is addicting.

So where/how do I research the new technology that will eventually get me into space and do other kinds of crazy evil genius type crap. I've finally broken into making billions of dollars. Acquired two other companies thusfar. I want to speed this up.

Beer Baron wrote: Well... this is addicting. So where/how do I research the new technology that will eventually get me into space and do other kinds of crazy evil genius type crap. I've finally broken into making billions of dollars. Acquired two other companies thusfar. I want to speed this up.

"Research" as a task. But I promise you the game doesn't get better and just becomes a grind.

Osterkraut wrote:

Beer Baron wrote: Well... this is addicting. So where/how do I research the new technology that will eventually get me into space and do other kinds of crazy evil genius type crap. I've finally broken into making billions of dollars. Acquired two other companies thusfar. I want to speed this up.

"Research" as a task. But I promise you the game doesn't get better and just becomes a grind.

So you're saying you simply finished the game through insane grinding, making 8-9 digits with each product to reach $700B?

GameboyRMH wrote:

Osterkraut wrote: Beat it. Worst ending ever. Don't even bother.

Whoa, how did you get past the rut I fell into and make $700B? It seems that you can only make a few tens or maybe hundreds of millions with each new product after you've innovated every possible product combination.

GameboyRMH wrote:

Osterkraut wrote:

Beer Baron wrote: Well... this is addicting. So where/how do I research the new technology that will eventually get me into space and do other kinds of crazy evil genius type crap. I've finally broken into making billions of dollars. Acquired two other companies thusfar. I want to speed this up.

"Research" as a task. But I promise you the game doesn't get better and just becomes a grind.

So you're saying you simply finished the game through insane grinding, making 8-9 digits with each product to reach $700B?

Sorry, didn't see your previous post..

I mean, I wouldn't call it insane grinding, I just hired a ton of people with Partner Warbuck's cash right off the bat and things went from there. Watching for profitable product combos, getting the hype up (two music festivals w/4 employees each, topped out at ~90x multiplier), maxed out research, verticals,locations, products, special projects, and some strategic acquisitions...

But yeah at the end if a product combo wasn't making me ~1 billion on average I moved on from it. Whole thing took about 10 hours of play, with two failed attempts of 2 hours or so each.

But eventually it just never wasn't "get an alert, click go to market, collect cash, wait 2 seconds for the next alert, click go to market, collect cash....etc, etc, etc." That's not a fun game.