About a week ago, I stumbled across a link to the LOWREZJAM 2014 on /r/gamedev. I forgot how it came to this, but I got the idea to make:
dot.Market
A Blocky Business Simulation
Enter the exciting and lucrative world of... dot trading? In this game you take the role of the sole proprietor of a store that specializes in selling dots. You buy dots from the wholesale market, stock them onto your shelves, slap price tags on them, open up for business and watch your merchandise disappear off the shelves, replaced by gross profit. The dots come in many variations (read: colours), each with their own individual markets (i.e. prices and customers) that change from day to day, following trends, depending on the forces that shape them. The game is currently open-ended, though the largest number I can fit in the window is 999999, which currently serves as a cap on your bank account.
I spent just as much time, maybe even more, testing formulas and crunching numbers in Excel trying to create a model of the dot market as I did coding the game itself. The model seems reasonable in it's current state. Note that I only took one course each on microeconomics and statistics in university, most of which I quickly forgot.
My inspirations are from other business simulations games, ranging from totally serious to quite fantastic:
- Capitalism II
- Lemonade Stand
- The stalk market in the Animal Crossing series.
- Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
Anyways, time for animated GIFs showing the basic functions of the game! (Note: these are not finalized graphics)
Checking out price history and other market stats
Checking the news tickers
(Boy, the quality of business journalism has sunk to a new low.
But seriously, these are just placeholder news items that
don't do anything.)
Buying dots from the market
Stocking dots onto shelves and pricing them
Opening for business and checking the changes to the market
Stay tuned for more information, which I hope will be soon.
Very unique idea. Just wondering if you have a business or stock trading background as I imagine you'd need some pretty detailed knowledge of this stuff to make a game like this?
I only studied economics very briefly, so I don't think I would be able to super-realistic economic model like in, say, the Capitalism series. The game's economic model will be mostly fantasy with some hint of truth.
Just a question, but is that the entire screen resolution? It seems kind of tiny, but it's your game do what you want.