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Show HN: Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism (intergalacticrobots.app)

41 points by geekamongus ↗ HN
I've been rebuilding old games with Claude. While creating a modern take on SimTower and having election news on TV in the background, I had the idea to build the economy of the game around democratic socialism instead of capitalism.

Instead of a real estate tycoon, you are an elected steward of the building, held responsible by the Assembly. Homes are allocated off a waitlist, dues are set on a sliding scale, and you face outside pressures from neighboring capitalist landlords.

The crown jewel is attracting a large grant to establish an observatory at the top of your tower, attracting scientists. To get there, you must make sure the people are fed, housed, healthy, and entertained. If the Assembly doesn't have confidence in your abilities, you get voted out.

It kinda works, and the potential failures in the game are pretty unique. I'd be interested to hear HN's take. An entire SimCity clone based on a different economy like this could be fun.

15 comments

[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 35.6 ms ] thread
iso1631
> attracting a large grant

From whom?

a2ff6eeb0
There's an incredible irony in using the most effective tool capitalism has produced to boost the power of capital, to make a game about socialism.
derdi
Cute game! Very CPU-hungry (in Firefox on Linux), maybe you can get it a bit more optimized. There are some annoying AI-isms ("the X is the goal not the Y"-- just tell me the X please).

Is there a way to build anything on the ground floor, or is it just a big empty lobby? Feels like wasting a lot of space.

ceejayoz
This is adorable and catches the original's vibe nicely, at least on first glance.
jakswa
Hell yeah I got people to move in. Nice job getting it to walk me through those intro steps.
[dead] mbmbn
[flagged]
bildung
Nice, this has a cute feel to it. I smiled about some of the gossip at the bottom. Tiny suggestions: make the space bar pause/unpause, and for my ears the background music could be way quieter compared to the sound effects - with the default settings I thought the game had no sound yet. Will definitely play more in the evening!
Kim_Bruning
Is it the idea to build a lot of coop working spaces first? Building homes is nice, but they don't pay as much rent.

Huh, flagged already. That seems just a bit unfair. It's a decent game! Maybe next round?

One thing I wonder about is that it does need some playtesting yet. Early game is slow!

alamsterdam
I played it earlier. Quite enjoyed it (GitHub issues)... Reminded me of my childhood.

Gameplay was a bit wonky, some issues. I saw the OP was posting here looking for comments, I wanted to give some feedback.

Not sure why it was flagged?

danielspace23
Just a couple of suggestions:

- As I use more than one computer, it would be nice to have a Save (or Export?) feature, that just gives you the game state as a file that I can transfer between devices. It would also be useful for backups.

- This could really be a Progressive Web App!

BaseBaal
Like the idea, but can't drag any element. Managed to build a lobby by double tapping. Elevator apparently needs to be dragged so I'm stuck. On Android & Waterfox.