It simulates real life pretty well:<p>- I have an unread email in the inbox but I can't find it<p>- The banks send me emails with no content in the body, some email glitch on their side<p>- I tried to buy a property, lost my solicitor's fee but never got the property<p>- There are no good jobs available except one underpaid junior position<p>- I pay way too much in tax compared to what I make
This reminds me a bit of "The game of life" back in the 90s<p>Optimizing life for filling the savings account as fast as possible at the expense of everything else has consequences and your game should reflect this.<p>You should have stats including your characters age, health, happiness and social skills and have some kind of social media app with your friends constantly trying to invite you out for concerts, nights out, dating? and so on so that you have constant distractions to spend your money on to make it more challenging. Not building up the happiness and social skills stats should have consequences. You should be able to buy a gym membership to keep your health stat from deteriorating.<p>The consequences of not building up those stats early in your life is poor health, shit social skills and no friends except for the people you work with. But yay, you're a millionaire I guess?<p>The real game of life is that it's all a balancing act between having your financial house in order while also having a fulfilling social life, health, and happiness
I played for around 10 minutes, quite fun. Some comments:<p>- how would you get 4% gains in real life? it makes a massive difference, but you're unlikely to reach this unless the money is put into the stock market<p>- was unable to sell my property (the "request valuation" button does nothing)<p>- the university option never showed up<p>- there were no further jobs after ~12 years of career (stopped at something like engineering manager at ~45k/year which is very low for London)<p>- advancing month-by-month is pretty slow. there should be a way of fast-forwarding to important events (new job, promotion, housing market goes up/down, etc)<p>- had to transfer $ to savings / pension in batches every year or so, losing out on a lot of interest. should be possible to set a monthly amount<p>- the expenses are way too stable to reflect real life<p>I ended the simulation at 35 years old, with €200k savings, €60k mortage equity, and €80k on a pension fund. Living on a €100k house, no car, no gifts, no travel, no family. It's not bad, but for someone saving fiercely from 18 years without any major expenses it's not a great result. Getting a high-paying job (80k+) around your 30s will land you in the exact same place, while giving you 12 years to live more liberally.
So you're assuming you're lucky enough to get a fairly high paying job (for 2002) straight out of school within walking distance of your mum's house, first job you applied for too? The rent is tiny, the expenses seem really low too.<p>For comparison my first job which required a uni degree and was in central london in 2003 was £18k a year. Rent on a bedsit was £520 a month, transport was £120 a month, student loan £59 a month, leaving £100 a week for food, bills (internet, electricity, tv, council tax, laundry+dry cleaning, etc), travel to see families, etc<p>It's a great way of showing the massive leg-up that people who have parents living in the London commuter-belt get though.
I changed job and suddenly started paying rent to mum even when I've had my own house for 2 years... payment for mortgage and to mum are right next to each other.<p>It would be nice if the houses showed the energy expenses and fees. And mortgages show the interest rate and the expected monthly payments.<p>Oh, and every property still shows the green "Purchase successful" message since I bought the first property.
Really liked the idea and spent 15-20 mins playing it. Would be good to save your progress. To be more realistic I shouldn't be able to buy a house after about 5 months of salary. Make the house prices 10 times more expensive if you want it to more like real life!<p>Also It's not clear to me if I take the job I can't go to university? I took the job in the absence of another choice, like real life if I got a great alternative offer I would leave the job and do that instead.<p>Nice work :-)
Great work. I was surprised to see it UK based but it was good. I think it'll help reinforce ideas of saving, pensions and forward thinking. Things you may want to consider:<p>- Gain graph? Some type of means to show how the gains have earned. Understand you're opting for a simulation of reality but it might help with understanding what is going on.<p>- Economic changes / opportunities? New stock, new financial products or travel opportunities. The email inbox is quite neat and it allows perhaps for these events to be introduced.<p>You may also like some of the mechanics from:
<a href="https://thefounder.biz/play/" rel="nofollow">https://thefounder.biz/play/</a>
<a href="https://graebor.itch.io/sort-the-court" rel="nofollow">https://graebor.itch.io/sort-the-court</a>
Didn't take me long to figure out the api endpoint to skip to the next turn, and after writing literally 3 lines of code in an infinite loop...<p>- The year is now 2030<p>- I have 300,000 in my bank account<p>- I own two houses worth 200k<p>- I'm still paying monthly mortgage payments to a house I fully own<p>- 100k in pension<p>- All this with just 55k/yr<p>- Still paying mum rent
Pretty fun.<p>If you want unlimited amount of money:<p>Get any job, then edit the "next turn" button to include an id.<p>Then just run this in the console:<p>const but = document.getElementById('theidyoupicked');<p>for (let i = 0; i < 500; i++) { setTimeout(() => but.click(), 1000 * i)}<p>You can lower the amount of time on the timeout, but it seems like there is some logic to prevent too fast calls.<p>But be gentle, it seems like it does a http request each time you click on "next turn" (I hope the author has some stable hosting because people who play will spam this button anyway).<p>I have hundreds of thousands of money but I cannot see a single property or car. It seems like there are a few bugs still.
This is fun. It's pretty buggy though.<p>I bought two properties so far (hindsight is awesome), but I'm still paying rent to mom, apparently I didn't move in.<p>Now I cannot sell or rent them out.<p>Also, not much happens? I just sit here watching numbers go up.
Very cool idea and look!<p>Read the first few emails, checked out the bank and web and started advancing next turn.<p>And... nothing.. just calendar advancing month at a time.<p>No new e-mails warning me of unemployment, no warnings about expiring bank balance.<p>You'd expect that your bank account at least would go down.<p>Hopefully, I am not considered dead - incidentally it would be realistic to add some actuary data to the game. Not everyone makes it retirement.
Great build! I won't go through the glitches that people have found since they seem to be pretty common.<p>I would, however, like to have the ability to automate my contributions to savings and the pension (like in real life). Other than that, I am going to park this in front of my high school senior to see what kind of decisions he makes. Thanks for building this!
Not sure if all of these are bugs, but:<p>- I was able to purchase a property for only £1100<p>- To buy without mortgage, you should explicitly enter 0 as mortgage amount<p>- This purchase didn't appear in my current account as a transaction, only the balance decreased correctly<p>- The property didn't appear on Property tab (but I started to get utility bills)<p>- No interest on pension account
This is really really cool and is the kind of thing schools should use to teach kids about money management.<p>I would make the next turn button a bit more prominent as I did not notice it at first. I would also maybe add a bit more of a tutorial. Really cool and keep it up.
Very fun game! Some observations:<p><pre><code> 1. don't know why it need to calls to get https://simulator.money/img/windows-xp-bg.jpg and dings/chimes.mp3 on every month. (Although cached by browser)
2. After purchase a property, it does not listed under properties tab in the bank, even with monthly utility bills.
3. Some missing mails there, maybe associate with mismatch unread count.
4. As a player, I am not sure what is the unit of "mortgage last", is it month or years?</code></pre>
Very looking forward to other options such as college/cars/jobs, etc. Great work!
I'm really glad I read the disclaimer and didn't make financial decisions based on this game! I wouldn't want to count on no inflation, 4% interest, and a junior dev job straight out of high school
Wonderful work. Did you use XP.css? (<a href="https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/" rel="nofollow">https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/</a>)
I know this is typically not a well-received style HN comment, but the name of the Pension website made me spit out coffee... this is a wonderful creation.
Is it correct that the mortgage keeps on billing me even though it is in negative balance = paid off, and the 1 year I have set it to has also expired?
When I read the comments I immediately thought about "Jones in the fast lane" from the 90ies, but this seems to be something entirely different.<p>That said a few of you might like to see that game. It is available on internet archive, can be played online and is quite unusual for its time.<p>At least I was happy to find it and played it once against the Jones AI (it is way funnier with friends).
The idea is great, but it gives some very weird ideas, like having 4% interest p.a. (not something I think still happens in the west). Maybe add a stock market fonds aspect in there (which may rise and fall), have more risky, more potentially lucrative, and less risky, more stable fonds in there.
Most of the features don't work, and there is no guidance at all.
I can't declare bankruptcy (the spelling is also incorrect), buy a car, sell a property, request valuation, etc...
It was a good idea, but it doesn't do what is meant to do.
Interesting to see KnockoutJS still being used in the wild! Cool game. Would like some more unexpected events to happen, and the Mortgage and Pension emails don't load, and neither does the "request valuation" of a bought property.
Interesting, fun. Would be a good idea to put a Settings option in the Start menu so that we could change things like bank interest rate (4% is nuts, nearly everything in the US is .01%) and the currency type, among other things.
Clearly still a work in progress, but the idea is really fun, if you're into this sort of thing... I guess I am!
One thing though, the font is cool and stuff, but really hard to read.
Please think of a way to make a board game that teaches folks the consequences of all the typical life decisions we have in common. I think it’d be a considerable service to society.
This is exactly my type of game. I love the concept. There are a lot of bugs though. Do you have an issues page or anything? And are you open to working with other developers on it?
Neat looking, but I've already been playing this "game" IRL for the past couple of decades; I really don't feel like grinding all over again from scratch.
This is great and shows real promise, do you have a mailing list so we can be subscribed for updates/when you reach 0.5?<p>also I'm paying my mum rent after I bought property wtf?
Kudos for the idea and execution. Microsoft Windows layout is a killer. I'm not sure about saving the game progress though. Bookmarked the app. Will play it again.
There are too many problems to count. I got a message with the subject "Mortgage in principal" and no text. Same with pensions.<p>The browser opens new pages without hiding old ones.<p>Inbox count is wrong.<p>Buttons aren't responsive (no, I don't mean mobile design). They give no indication that something is happening.<p>Dragging windows is buggy.<p>There is no loading animation on clicking "next turn", nothing that indicates that the month has passed. Just add a dark overlay with a black and white loading bar and show the date afterwards.<p>I tried this in Chromium and Firefox and the problems are the same.
this is super cool... i want to have my kids do it, but it's a bit too buggy - it has to work for teenagers, with zero bugs... open a patreon, and I will donate!