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Show HN: Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism
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.
- git-nebulous 2mo ago[flagged]
- DC-3 2mo agovenuzuela hamburger xDDDD
- ungreased0675 2mo agoIs there crime in the game?
- geekamongus 2mo agoNot yet. There are fires, and a trained safety team (something you have to get funded and maintain) puts them out. SimTower didn't have crime either, so I didn't consider building that out.
- ebolyen 2mo agoI recall SimTower had bomb threats for the security team to deal with.
- iso1631 2mo ago> attracting a large grant From whom?
- antiquark 2mo ago[flagged]
- kristianc 2mo agoMost democratic socialist societies are capitalist, capitalism just remains politically subordinate rather than able to govern society unchecked.
- energy123 2mo agoThose would be social democracies.
- numbers_guy 2mo agoNo, social democracies are subservient to capital. The whole modern democratic socialist movement as I understand it is primarily to fix exactly that issue.
- energy123 2mo agoI don't have much to discuss about the movement (although I am sceptical due to the repeated historical pattern of Mensheviks making way for Bolsheviks), but the subject we are discussing are democratic socialist countries, not movements, which as far as I am aware, don't exist. There are social democracies like Finland, which is what I assume the poster was referring to.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- bildung 2mo agoThat cuts both ways - can people in the US vote for democratic socialism, or will the capitalists then create super PACs to influence elections, thus undermining the principle of one person, one vote?
- 2mo ago
- a2ff6eeb0 2mo agoThere'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.
- bildung 2mo agoBut not that new, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them" is a quote attributed to Lenin, so >100 years old by now
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agohttps://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/ ...The earliest strong match located by QI appeared in 1955 within a periodical called “The Commonwealth: Official Journal of the Commonwealth Club of California”. The club is a non-profit public affairs organization. The quotation [by Major George Racey Jordan] appeared as a filler item.
- a2ff6eeb0 2mo agoThis smells a bit closer to "We're capitalists, but we'd like to get some lift from the current socialist vibe". If that's the case, respect for skimming off the rubes. If not, it's giving "We're tying ourselves up with the rope the capitalists sold us".
- geekamongus 2mo agoWell, it's a free game, and open source... I acknowledge the irony though.
- derdi 2mo agoCute 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.
- schumpeter 2mo agoSimtower, which he modeled this after, only allowed lobby on the first floor… or a multi floored lobby.
- geekamongus 2mo agoThanks...I will work on optimizing that. There's also a Mac version you can download, but that wouldn't work in your case. As someone else said, the lobby is the lobby - eventually the Assembly starts to meet there once you make enough progress, but that is about it.
- derdi 2mo agoGot it, fair enough, thanks!
- jakswa 2mo agoHell yeah I got people to move in. Nice job getting it to walk me through those intro steps.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoThis is adorable and catches the original's vibe nicely, at least on first glance.
- mbmbn 2mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2mo agoYeah, co-ops don't exist in capitalist places like NYC, right?
- goda90 2mo ago>An entire SimCity clone based on a different economy like this could be fun. There's this example of such a game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...
- bildung 2mo agoNice, 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!
- geekamongus 2mo agoThanks for the feedback! If you hold the volume button it opens up sliders to adjust the music/ambient noise levels. I should make this more obvious, probably.
- bildung 2mo agoNo it's fine, I had no trouble finding the sound settings! My remark was just about the defaults (and probably is more of an individual preference anyway)
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- alamsterdam 2mo agoA few friendly suggestions: - Building a floor and then the room/office is a bit annoying…. Should auto build the floor (like Sim Tower) - Stairs are difficult to build, it should be possible to build a vertical column, seems you always have to build horizontally? - It should be possible to have multiple elevator cars in 1 shaft. Of course this is not possible in real life, but we are looking at a 2D shape of a 3D building. Either that or reduce the demand on the elevators - In real life, Stairs and Elevators generally share a fire space away from residential, that should be encouraged
- ceejayoz 2mo agoPutting several elevators right next to each other seems to work nicely.
- Kim_Bruning 2mo agoIs 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!
- jakswa 2mo agoI can't begin to picture how much AI slop they are having to filter out. I wonder if they are going to entertain some UX to save people disappointment. "The project should be non-trivial. Don't post quickly-generated one-offs; anybody can do that now. Share something that is deeply personal and interesting to you. Explain how and why." To me the whole HN website feels like a quickly-generated one-off lol. Guess they hope you can find the freshest ruleset for the thing you're trying to post. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- arendtio 2mo agoIf it was generated pre-2020 by some slow meatballs (like news.ycombinator.com), it is okay to have edges; post-2020, it must be closed to perfection. I don't know what everybody is complaining about AI-generated content. In the past, nobody cared how the content was generated (ed, vim, emacs, VS Code, ...). It either was good or it was not. Personally, I don't care if the content is AI-generated as long as it is good. But maybe that is, because I think that it is possible to generate good content using AI.
- alamsterdam 2mo agoI 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 2mo agoJust 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 2mo agoLike 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.