Hi everyone!
It's time for the next update. But before I start listing what's new in the game, I want to thank my audience.
Project Manager SIM has passed 500 copies sold! I'm really proud of that result and glad you enjoy what I'm making. Did I expect this much support in Early Access? Not sure. But now I understand that releasing the game in Early Access was the right call.
Thank you all once again, because your messages, advice and wishes genuinely shape the final version of the game I'm working towards.
Now, about the update:
As I said before, this update is meant to kick off the mid game and start moving the player away from the "fetch and carry" role to something a bit higher. I can't say I've gone very far in that direction yet, but what matters is the movement XD
So, I've settled on where I want to go. It's the path from project manager to, at the very least, head of project office. And maybe even Big Boss some day. In this update I tried to make it so the player can already delegate some tasks to someone else instead of doing absolutely everything alone.
I want to call this update I AM A MANAGER.
Let's get to the details, as usual, by category:
THE MOST IMPORTANT:
The "save up $5,000 and buy a car" win condition is gone. Now "My Life" has a checklist of 12 goals: the first thousand, a car, a furnished apartment, the big office, 15 people on the team, partnership, $100,000 on the company account, and so on. There are more activities now, and more goals too.
THE BIG OFFICE
The extension. The office can now be expanded: it's bought from the boss in the new "Premises" section for $10,000, 20 trust and $150 rent per day. A new wing appears to the left of the old office: a meeting room, a sales department, another open-space area with 9 desks and a second toilet. Yes, the toilet matters too.
The meeting room. What's an office without a meeting room? It's the heart of any office (where else would you waste time?). It hosts agile team standups, and the player can also call their own meeting: spend your colleagues' time, but give them +20% efficiency until the end of the day.
Partnership is now only available after the big office. Before, you could ask for a share right away; now the boss wants to see you've grown up first. He'll even praise you. Well, "praise", in his own style XD
AGILE CONTRACTS
A new project type. This is the first step towards not having to micromanage every project. Agile contracts can only be taken if the team has an employee of Lead level. Effectively, they'll be the one "running" the project. Our job is more about assembling the right team and helping out in the various events that will come up.
How it works. The team grinds progress points all week, and on Friday the client pays: points × rate × mood. The client's mood is a separate scale: beat the target and it rises, fail it and it drops. The rate will change over time too.
Standups and cohesion. The meeting room has to be used somehow. The agile team will gather there to discuss very important matters. Cohesion affects productivity. Needless to say, a geek and a jock won't get along too well. A furry and a pet lover, on the other hand, are a different story.
Their own events. Refactoring, overtime, a conflict in the team, a demo for the client, tech debt that can "blow up", renegotiating the terms. Just like real life.
OFFICE STAFF
A living HR. The HR specialist no longer lives behind a desk; they come to the office like everyone else. Hooray. As before, HR will look for candidates on their own, so the player no longer needs to spend time on it. But the main new thing is that you can now give HR an order to find a specific specialist. Ask for someone cheap, pick their traits, gender, salary level and skills. The more conditions, the longer and pricier the search.
The "value for money" rating. With HR hired, candidates and roster entries get a chip: "Overpriced", "Average", "Good value", "Star". It compares salary to skill within the grade. HR doesn't give exact numbers, just words. It's useful!
The cleaner. Trash now appears in the office: coffee cups, crumbs, puddles, scraps of paper, footprints on rainy days. Someone has to clean it up. That means the player. Well, until they hire a cleaner.
Sales department. You can now hire two salespeople (after buying the big office). They, in turn, can be assigned to specific clients to further increase the income from their projects. Plus you set priorities by client and by project tier.
OFFICE POLICIES
16 office policies in 4 categories. Imagine that: the boss now lets you change the office rules! Unheard of. Want to make everyone come in earlier or stay late? Easy! Oh, you're a good project manager, I forgot. Then give them a fruit basket or let them go home early on Fridays (you'll go home too).
A LOAN FROM THE BOSS
From $500 to $5,000 for 2–8 weeks. Yes, I noticed that at some point in the game money runs short, and you're literally a couple of thousand short of making it to the next payday. Loans seem like the fix for that. It's simple. Take a loan, pay the interest, pay off the debt.
CHOOSING THE BOSS = CHOOSING THE DIFFICULTY
You can now pick a difficulty level. Effectively it's a choice of boss. There's no fundamental difference between them, but the easy-difficulty boss has cool glasses, stays in the office all day, plus you get income bonuses and lower employee salaries. I've started thinking about a "custom difficulty", but that's for future updates (a long way off)
THE PM'S LIFE
The car. You could already "buy" it at the end of the game before. But now it's actually useful. You'll be able to drive it to work and arrive by 08:10 for free. Though I didn't have time (it didn't quite work out) to draw a sprite for it. Sorry, left that for later. For now it's just an emoji.
Moustaches and beards. I didn't draw the car, but I did draw several kinds of moustaches and beards. They turned out nice.
Weather. I wanted some variety. Now it can rain, or the sun can shine a bit brighter.
EVENTS
5 new mid-game events: a big deal from a salesperson, "the salesperson overpromised", a neglected client, the team's star asks for a raise, a revolt against a policy. More interesting this way.
ACHIEVEMENTS
+20 Steam achievements (including two for Smelly James that were in the game but not on Steam).
GERMAN AND FRENCH
The game has been translated into German and French. Honestly: it's machine translation with spot checks by native speakers. I know that's not ideal, but I decided to do it to reach a wider audience. If you find an awkward phrase, write in the form or the discussions and I'll fix it.
BUG FIXES FROM YOUR REPORTS
I won't list what I found myself, only what came through the form and the discussions:
Alt-tab during "Heading home…" froze the game for good. Fixed, turned out to be simple.
After the weekend, everyone showed up at the office at 9:20 at once, with no commute bar. The night skip "overshot" the time. Now Monday starts at exactly 08:00. As far as I understand, not everyone had this, but it happened.
The "on the road" bar blocked the buttons underneath it (the "Develop" button on a client). It no longer does.
The PM twitched around the table at 10x and couldn't sit down for lunch. Now sits down.
The "Past Midnight" achievement counted "stayed up until 00:00" instead of the bedtime on the timeline. Now it goes by the timeline.
When assigning to support, you couldn't see that the person was on vacation. Now you can.
4–6 freelancers in a row: I toned down the randomness, that won't happen anymore.
I removed the leaderboard from the game entirely: it worked strangely before, and after the win condition changed it lost its meaning. It'll be back once I figure out what to fill it with.
To sum up:
A small piece of bad news. It's getting harder and harder for me to test the game, because there's a lot of content and a lot of connections now. I'm sure I've removed most of the issues, but I can't promise. If you find bugs, please send them to me through the form in the main menu. I think I've done some serious work. And I like how it's turning out. I already have ideas for the next update, but I'll keep them to myself for now. I'll definitely tell you later.
Finally, thank you once again for your feedback. Thank you! I really hope you enjoy the update.