A game by Hardline Interactive
A first-person sim about running a software studio. Start in your garage, ship products, take on clients, move into offices and hire a team.
- Developer
- Hardline Interactive
- Release
- Coming soon
- Platforms
- Single-player
- Steam Cloud
- Full controller support
- Steam Achievements
- Adjustable text size
- Custom volume controls
- Camera comfort
- Adjustable difficulty
- Remappable controls
About the game
You start out in your parents’ garage with an old laptop and a bit of savings. Answer your emails, order desks and computers from ShopRiver, carry the boxes in from the door and set everything up. Then make your first game or app in DevStudio, release it on Vapor or AppMart, and find out what the reviewers think.
From there, how the studio grows is up to you. Build websites for local clients, run your own web services, or start a hosting company with racks of servers you cable up yourself. Rent an office in town, hire a team, and keep them happy with coffee, comfy chairs and the odd pay rise, or they may hand in their notice.
You won’t be on your own for long. Rachel, a mentor, shows you round your first day, your mum checks in, a rival from school starts a studio of his own, and there’s a class reunion, DevExpo and an awards night to look forward to. Meanwhile the bills, the taxes and the jammed printer won’t wait.
Features
- Start in your parents' garage with an old laptop, and work your way up to offices with real floor plans: a lobby, a kitchen, toilets, meeting rooms, a server room and an office of your own.
- Make games and apps in DevStudio, from planning and design through development and testing to release. Sell them on Vapor and AppMart, read the reviews and patch the bugs.
- Take on clients by email, build their websites to a deadline and keep them on a weekly maintenance retainer.
- Run your own web services, then a hosting company: rack your servers, set up the network in NetConsole, and keep customers online through power cuts, overheating and DDoS attacks.
- Hire developers, designers, artists, testers, support staff and a receptionist. They come in at 9, sit at their desks and type, fetch coffee, take breaks, ask for pay rises and sometimes quit.
- Hold standups, planning meetings and retrospectives at the whiteboard or meeting table, and talk things through in 1:1s.
- About 30 awards to win, from the Indie Dev Awards to game jams, each arriving by post to go on a shelf or in your trophy cabinet.
- Design your studio: floors, walls, lighting and rooms, with your own studio logo on the reception wall, the front door and the mugs.
Accessibility
- Interface size from 80% to 140%, for all text and panels.
- Reduce motion. Menus fade instead of sliding, there are no zooms, and Rachel's tips appear in full instead of typing out.
- Every keyboard key can be rebound. Mouse sensitivity, invert mouse Y and field of view (60° to 100°) can be changed.
- Plays fully on a controller, with a look speed setting and Xbox, PlayStation or Steam Deck button prompts.
- Separate volumes for effects, interface, ambience, music and voices. Rachel's spoken tips can be turned off, and they always appear as text too.
- Esc pauses everything: people, cars, animations and sounds.
- A Relaxed difficulty, with twice the savings and better sales.
Not in yet
- A colour-blind or high-contrast mode
- A text size setting separate from the interface size
- Remapping controller buttons (keyboard keys can all be changed)
- Languages other than English
Need one of these, or something else? Let me know.
Questions
What platforms is it on?
It's being made for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Can I play with a controller, or on Steam Deck?
Yes. The whole game plays on a controller, including the in-game computer, with a virtual cursor, Xbox, PlayStation or Steam Deck button prompts, and an on-screen keyboard for typing. Layouts are checked at the Steam Deck's 1280×800 screen, and there's a Steam Deck graphics preset.
Is there multiplayer?
No, it's single-player. Co-op is something we're thinking about for later, but none of it has been built and it isn't promised.
What languages is it in?
English for now. Every line in the game can be translated, and there's a Language setting. If you'd like to help translate it, the "Help translate the game" button in Settings takes you to the Discord.
Is it hard?
You choose when you start a new game. Relaxed gives you twice the savings and things sell a bit better, Normal is the way it's meant to be played, and Hard halves your savings in a tougher market. Rachel's tutorial can be skipped at any time.
When is it out, and how much will it cost?
There's no release date or price yet.