Hey everyone!
And straight to the main point. As you've probably noticed - I'm releasing the game into Early Access on July 30. I didn't exactly plan this from the start, but the moment I began getting feedback on my demo, I realized that developing a game together with players is way more fun than doing it alone XD.
Especially since I'm a solo developer. I've been working on the game for more than 8 months now, and already I can't balance everything on my own - even though I've only implemented the early game out of everything I have planned. Right now players are leaving me tons of feedback that I really need. Thank you so much! Without you, there would be no Project Manager SIM.
And now I'm going to drop a very long and very dry article about what's changing in the game for its Early Access launch and how it'll differ from the demo. I'll go through all the categories one by one (that's how the tasks were sitting in my task tracker), regardless of scale or importance.
TL;DR - what's changing for Early Access (for those who don't want to read the whole wall of text):
Market influence - a new mechanic: every month the world rolls a die across 4 axes (economy, clients, hiring, HR climate). You'll have to wait for the right moment.
Clients came alive - reputation is now separate for each one, and employees like/dislike different clients (a bonus or penalty to mood and efficiency).
Support projects reworked and fixed - proper XP, clear rewards, their own section in the UI.
Burnout now reacts to your decisions - crunch and denied vacations/raises build it up; rest and bonuses bring it down.
A harsher, fairer economy - the boss takes a monthly cut, dividends are paid daily, a new goal (save up for your first car), projects are more varied (juicy ones and flat-out bad ones), and the project limit goes up to 10.
A living office -- a lounge with a TV, a foosball table, an AC unit, and "Employee of the Week."
Hiring reworked - salary no longer gives away skill, and candidates now have office demands.
12 challenges, 33 achievements (on Steam), and a leaderboard.
…and a drift mode hidden in the settings. Don't ask.
Now, the detailed and dry version. Let's go:
A new market influence mechanic (the seeds of it):
I decided the game was missing some unpredictability XD. The world around your company should feel alive (at least not static). Starting from the second month, every month the market rolls a die across four axes, and each can be "good," "normal," or "bad":
Economy - affects the budgets of new projects and support rates (+-15%).
Clients - how many projects per week are even available to you.
Hiring - candidates' salary expectations and the size of the pool.
HR climate - the overall mood and efficiency of your whole team (+-10).
Now you'll have to wait for the right moment to pursue your ambitions.
Reworking clients:
Clients are an essential part of a project manager's job. I haven't given this area enough attention yet, but the first steps are already here.
Reputation is now separate for each client. There used to be a single shared pool of points - now you build a relationship with each client individually and spend points on upgrades for that specific client.
Employees like and dislike different clients. Every worker has interests, and they affect their sympathy toward a client: a techie geek loves an IT startup but frowns at a construction firm; a finance-bro is happy with a bank but can't stand media. While an employee works for "their" client - +10 mood and +10% efficiency; for a "disliked" one - the opposite. I haven't fully polished this mechanic yet, but it'll form the foundation of a future sales office, where you'll be able to choose which clients to focus on. For now, experimenting.
Support projects:
Support contracts in the demo were, to put it mildly, raw. I didn't add anything fundamentally new - rather, I refined and fixed them:
Time and XP are now counted correctly - the specialist's work and tickets show up in reports, just like regular projects. For each closed ticket the worker earns XP, and the PM gets XP for a completed contract.
A clear reward. For every week of support worked: +2 reputation points for the client, +2 to global reputation, and +1 boss trust. Previously a successful contract could give nothing at all.
Overdues and termination are now separated: the payout penalty is based on this week's overdues, while contract termination is based on the total limit across the whole contract.
Bugs fixed: a fired specialist no longer "haunts" the contract; a new offer from a client now appears right after you buy an upgrade or finish an old contract (instead of waiting for Monday); Customer Support is now always a contractor (being a freelancer broke their progression); fixed the weird log text when no specialist is on site.
Support projects moved into their own section (at the top, with a header), both in the lists and in the boss's selection window. Plus there's now a dedicated size filter - SUPPORT.
Burnout - expanding the mechanic:
Burnout used to quietly grow from bad mood and that was it. I extended the mechanic further, into the player's actions too.
It grows from "bad" decisions: crunch +3, denying a vacation +8, refusing a competitor's offer without a raise +5, denying a raise +5, publicly scolding a junior +4, unpaid leave +3, denying a day off +1.
It drops slower than it builds up: vacation −8 on return, a bonus −5, a paid day off / sick leave −3, and time on the lounge sofa in front of the TV also reduces burnout.
Economy and rebalance:
Everything is now both more logical and meaner.
The boss takes his cut every month. Instead of the abstract "bring in profit" quest, there's now a real tax: at the end of each month the boss deducts a fixed sum, and it grows month over month. Fail to earn his "cut" - you go into the red and risk bankruptcy.
Dividends drip in daily. Your share of the company's income no longer waits for the end of the month - it's paid out daily, like a salary. Feels more right given the current situation.
A new life goal - save up for your first car. The win condition is now clear and human: reach a personal balance. The road there is a 4+ hour run. Or longer. Or even more than one run.
Severance pay is now predictable - exactly half a month's salary. No more roulette when firing someone.
Projects can now be good or not-so-good. I reworked generation: margin and deadlines are two separate axes. Sometimes you get a fat contract, sometimes a mediocre one. And the deadline now correlates with the volume of work, instead of always hitting the same "floor." The project economy should now look more real and alive.
The project limit is raised to 10 (via a new skill tier), so the scale of your company is no longer the ceiling.
Here I want to note separately: the game hasn't gotten easier. I got mixed feedback on this, but right now I want the game to be challenging and interesting - for me too (I have to test it for dozens of hours XD). And in general I'm trying to build the game around "easy to learn, hard to master," and I want the player to not always be able to beat a challenge on the first try.
But I really tried to make the balance more varied. If you look at the demo - all projects were always more or less "average." Boring. Now you can take a genuinely bad project, or you can wait for the big fish. And there are more projects overall, so now you can afford to pass on some.
But! Everything is understood by comparison! I'll definitely keep tweaking the balance further.
Office and employees:
I added new furniture!
A lounge area - a sofa and a TV. Idle employees zone out in front of the TV, restore energy, boost their mood, and slowly shed burnout.
Foosball table - yes, you can now play football in the office! Idle employees play in pairs; the winner is happy, the loser is bummed, and playing together brings the team closer.
AC unit - a nice +5% efficiency for everyone.
Employee of the Week. Buy the honor frame, and once a week you can name your best worker: they get +10 mood, +10% efficiency, and +10 loyalty. But be careful — those who rank higher by points may start to get jealous. The week's hero's portrait proudly hangs in the frame on the wall.
I also drew additional hairstyles, accessories, hats, and stuff like that. It's all the foundation for an "inventory." Unfortunately I didn't manage to implement that mechanic in time for EA. I still don't quite understand how to introduce and balance it properly. Put it off for later.
Hiring:
Hiring is reworked. A candidate's salary is no longer tied to their skill - the price rolls within their grade's "band." That means the price tag no longer gives away skill, and the "Talent Assessment" skill finally has meaning: without it, you only see a blur. Now you really can hire a "meh" employee for a lot of money - look closely.
Again, I'm doing this so the player pays more attention to details and makes decisions. The reasoning is the same as with the project rebalance.
Candidates now have office demands. A senior might want a coffee machine, a kitchen, or a lounge - and until you have them, the "Hire" button is disabled, and the requirements are highlighted right on the card.
Interface:
A batch of usability fixes - here are the main ones:
Filters in project selection and in the employee list (by client, size, role).
Reworked (finished) shops for clients and the boss.
Hints during project selection - including a clear explanation of how many tasks you need to overdue to fail a contract.
Frozen columns in the Gantt plan. Now, when you scroll the timeline, the key columns stay in place - no more scrolling back and forth.
Deadlines are counted in working days. "3 days left," where two of them are Saturday and Sunday, no longer misleads you.
Context right in the event window. When a client asks for extra work or a junior makes a mistake - you immediately see which project it is, how much progress it has, and how many working days are left until the deadline. Deciding is easier now.
A boss idea is now noticeable - the icon and the line blink bright red, you can't miss it.
Bottom panels no longer open "underneath" other windows and no longer switch into each other without closing the previous one.
And dozens of little things: scrolling in the hiring menu with 5 candidates, a bigger boss window in the mornings, a centered menu in windowed mode, roster avatars with hats and accessories, the "Assign" button without that dumb highlight frame, full point numbers in the day summary, and much more.
Challenges, achievements, and Steam:
12 challenges — special scenarios for those for whom simply winning isn't enough. Just for yourself for now. But it's more interesting this way.
33 achievements for all sorts of mechanics — from your first thousand to peeking on someone in the toilet. And they all sync with Steam! (Challenges are only tracked in-game for now.)
A Steam leaderboard — compete for who reaches the goal the fastest. Fewer days — higher rank.
One easter egg to finish:
At one point I was fixing several bugs for a couple of days and they just refused to get fixed. I've generally been sleeping way too little since I started working on this update. At some point I added "Experimental features" to the settings. Now you can enable "Drift." The player starts behaving like a car at 5x and 10x speed. DON'T ASK WHY I MADE THIS.
There you go.
As you can see, there are a lot of changes.
For those who played the demo - you won't find a new game when EA launches. But you'll find the same one, only better and more varied.
And now a bit about what "package" the game will ship with in EA. Let me note upfront: I believe I've only implemented the early game so far. And not even fully, it seems. But I tried to build this early game to give the player a challenge - and to make them study the game in order to beat it. The game has a core loop that underpins the whole concept and mechanics. There's about 4–6+ hours of gameplay there (after that it's a sandbox). By the way, at least 20 people played the demo for 10+ hours XD. I have no idea how they did it.
I've already sketched out a small roadmap for the next steps, and I want to start peeking into the mid-game. And there: a bigger office, new project types, complications of current ones, new specialist types, automation, developing adjacent departments (like HR and sales). In general, I just want to keep making the game deeper and more interesting.
Right now I want to launch into Early Access, tick that box, look at the first reviews, and keep getting feedback from players.
Thank you for your attention and support!
That's it :) See you on July 30 - I'm off to keep testing the game.