Can you run this?
An indie game studio simulation

Can You Ship a Game Before the Money Runs Out?

You and your cofounder quit your jobs to make a game. Pick the genre, the engine and the team. Then the same three-way fight every studio has: scope, time and quality. Every idea makes the game bigger, every month costs payroll, and every shortcut shows up in the reviews. Find a publisher or go it alone, build wishlists, and survive launch. Most games sell a little. A few break out.

  • 12 monthsto a playable alpha, a quarter per page
  • +12 monthslaunch, reviews and the long tail
  • 1 in 10games earn back what they cost

About this simulation

Difficulty
Advanced High risk. Debt, leverage, crises and big systems. Many runs end early.
Length
12 months + 12 more, about 10 minutes for the first part
Category
Run a business
You decide
Team, budget, scope, release

How it plays

  1. Months 1–3 · Pre-production — Start your studio
  2. Months 4–6 · Production — Scope, hype and hours
  3. Months 7–9 · Vertical slice — Show it and fund it
  4. Months 10–12 · Alpha — The deal and the alpha

After the debrief, “Keep going — finish and launch it” continues the run with calendar events, new challenges and opportunities that build on what you chose earlier. Every decision page has a live preview that shows what your picks do to the numbers before you lock them in.

What you get at the end

A debrief with your outcome, charts of where the money went, your biggest mistake and roughly what it cost, and a full report you can copy or save as a PDF. Everything runs in your browser: no sign-up, nothing to install.

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