Rebalanced the top promotions; mortgages and other major purchases are now separate choices. New ideas don't hurt, but I'm reasonably happy with this list.
Promotion Level 3: Social Drinking, Lattes, Gym Membership, Gadgets, Entertainment
Promotion Level 4: Vacations, Fancy Clothes, Wine
Promotion Level 5: Housekeeping, Landscaping, Cruises, Massages, Club Memberships
Flexible: Mortgage, New Cars, Yachts
(Essentially re-make the Game of Life, but let people choose how the doom themselves)
Thanks for such an extensive response, but we're not entirely on the same page here. While remaking the Game of Life could be a worthwhile goal, it is not my goal. If that's what everyone here was interested in, sorry.
The game begins with the player character several years after graduation, stuck in a dead end job with mounting credit card debt. Broken down and on the verge of depression, he* falls asleep in front of the television. In his dream, he reimagines his life in a fantasy framework to try to regain control. The Credit Card Armies have taken over most of his kingdom, conquering places like Free Time Mountain and letting darker forces (the Knights of Stress, Disillusionment, and Discontent) attack Castle Sanity. Terms not final, but you get the idea.
*I wanted to let players choose gender and some other things, but this would multiply the amount of work this will take and reduce the amount of content possible.
I don't want this to take itself terribly seriously, or be edutainment - it's a game, not repackaged financial advice. But if you want to play
well, you'll end up following strategies that work in real life. If players intuit those lessons that's fine, but ideally this won't feel intrusive. Ultimately the goal is to take on more abstract enemies of unhappiness, and there are multiple valid paths to get there. Hence it's important that you start with baggage, because with a clean slate, players would feel like the game just represented life on easy mode.
For me (and this forum, I'd expect) the fun will be more about doing this efficiently: maximizing income, minimizing expenses, investing, etc. Early retirement will be optional post-game content, ie challenges more difficult than the final dungeon/boss. My hope is that different kinds of people could get different kinds of fun out of the game.
You need to provide incentives for lifestyle inflation.
E.g. Perhaps some sort of work - entertainment life balance, increased income due to looking "successful" (which of course don't cover the cost of your image)
Alternatively, you could have scores that make people want to keep inflating their lifestyle. (E.g. An as compared to the Joneses you have a cooler car)
Why have an upper limit on income? Let people work overtime / take on a second job.
I want to include a mechanic for work-life balance and stress, but I haven't figured out how it's going to work in yet. I agree it's important to include.
As of levels 3-5 the player is salaried, so overtime isn't possible. There's already some content for second jobs and other work on the side - since that's a more ambitious path, it doesn't come with lifestyle inflation by default. I worry the current promotions will already feel unrealistically optimistic to most people given the starting position, but ultimately, the upper limit exists because there's a limit to how much new content I'm going to create.
Sounds like a fun game! (that I would - er - buy...)
There are already some great suggestions for lifestyle inflation. What hurts my own wallet though is not adding new items (e.g. jetski) but rather having the initial items get more expensive over time. For example, as you get older it becomes less acceptable to have box wine and video games as entertainment, as opposed to dinner and a show. So now you must compromise on the $ or the friendships.
Maybe you could work friends/family into the game?
I agree, I just worry that constantly rising general expenses wouldn't be much fun as a game mechanic. The money vs friendships idea is an interesting one and I'll have to think about how to model it.
For family and friends, do you mean social aspects as in Farmville and other such games? That's not part of the plan right now, sorry. If you mean the character having family and friends, yeah, that's a major aspect.
