After a busy January with the Steam Game Festival, where we didn’t find the time to update you all on development, here we are again. After all, “the past is in your head, the future is in your hands.”
Story Mode Have you heard that some people aren’t actually interested in making as much money as possible? They want to live a good life doing things they enjoy, helping their neighbours and cuddling puppies. This is a perfectly valid philosophy but maybe they should ask their banker what they think about it.
FERIOS has a strong commitment to inclusivity and accessibility (our PR specialist told us to write this). You’ll be able to enjoy the game in Story Mode, where the company will offset your losses, and competition will be actively biased in your favor, so you can lay back and enjoy the show with zero worries about actually working.
In Story Mode you can spend more time neatly organizing your desk
Achievements But there’s also another kind of people. People that want to make the most out of the cards they’re dealt. People who are ready to sacrifice everything to get their games to 100% completion so their Steam friends can see how committed they are. Those people are welcome too and we’re cooking up some challenges so they can show-off their skills and brag to their fellow gamer friends.
That’s a nice thing to have on your profile isn’t it
Learn about the Stock Market in The Invisible Hand Dev Q&A
Great news. All of your stock market questions can now be answered by The Invisible Hand developers!
After all, we are making a game about the stock market!
Come hang out in the Fellow Traveller Discord, as we answer your questions about our game and what on earth it means to short a stock.
After all, now is the time to be googling words about the stockmarket, but it doesn't mean that a short squeeze makes any more sense the more times you read it.
You can play the demo of The Invisible Hand during the Steam Game Festival until Feb 9, and decide for yourself if the cost of making money is worth what it costs.
Especially if you've been following The News this week, there's a good chance you'll be interested in The Invisible Hand. No, you can't buy Gamespot stock with it. But you do get to the play the stockmarket and deal with the consequences of it, but you know, not IRL.
Experience the Stock Market in The Invisible Hand's Gameplay Stream
GAMESPOT STOCK. SHORT SQUEEZE.
If you've had to google any of these words in the last week, there's a good chance you'll be interested in The Invisible Hand. No, you can't buy Gamespot stock with it. But you do get to the play the stockmarket and deal with the consequences of it, but you know, not IRL.
We'll be playing through The Invisible Hand, and showing off just what it looks like to be a mid-level stockbroker, pursuing wealth and success at the cost of everything else.... possibly even your freedom.
Don't miss the gameplay livestream!
You can play the demo of The Invisible Hand during the Steam Game Festival until Feb 9, and decide for yourself if the cost of making money is worth what it costs.
Hello and happy new year to our beloved shareholders. With the coming year, our primary goal is to reach new heights, for a successful 2021. And as we all know, a pillar of success is buying yachts and doing frivolous things on them, another key goal for 2021.
Ignorance is blissful but information is power Far removed from the physical and mental concerns of the lower class, our moneyed friends occasionally gather in swell environments to network and discuss the matters of the masters, while consuming recreational substances. We wanted to integrate a representation of this fascinating ritual of sociological interest. But don’t think it’s all fun and games. Important information is shared and secret deals are made in those places.
When nothing goes right, go left.
Funneling what’s trickling down Capitalism has a tendency to favor those who are already established. Once you are rich enough, we’ll let you access a *re-distributive* feature of modern finance: dividends. You give money to a company, and they regularly give you a little less money in return. If you maintain your positions well, after some time, you’ll be out of work but you’ll still get paid just because you own those pieces of privatized power we call shares. This is trickle-down economics. You just have to make sure it stops trickling down at your level.
If you made a cent for every manufactured bullet, well that’d just be bad cause war is not cool.
Howdy! We’re back here this month to humbly share our advancement with you, our precious shareholders.
Here’s a detailed infographic of how things are going:
As you can see, things are going great. Someone with big influence said one day, “Network Marketing is the wave of the future”.
Last month we went hard on implementing content to make the game playable from start to finish. We’re almost there, and right now the balancing is so off it’s actually funny to watch the market behave in a way we, the actual developers of the game, didn’t anticipate. Fortunately our advanced computer experience will make it easy for us to refine this into a well-paced and satisfying experience, up to industry standards, by orienting the odds in your favour. We value our shared interests.
You will experience relatively normal things in the game
We’re having fun implementing physically impossible character spawning to keep you on edge. Have you ever been scared by a coworker tapping on your shoulder while you’re focused on some important work stuff? We’re working on including it. Life in the office has its ups and downs, but we’re working on narrative beats and systems so it’s more ups than downs!
Is going out of the office really going to be a good time?
Our publisher, Fellow Traveller is an indie games label publishing innovative story-driven games. Their newest game, Suzerain is out today!
Suzerain is a text based, political strategy game, where you play as the newly elected President of Sordland, following 20 year dictatorship. It’s 1954 and it’s your job to lead the country into an uncertain future.
[previewyoutube="q8F6zS9I8PM;full"] Navigate your first term through conversations with your cabinet members, colleagues and family. It’s up to you to decide who you will trust, what you will sacrifice and where your priorities lie.
Will you reform the constitution, transforming the Republic into a brutal dictatorship or true democracy? Align yourself with the capitalist of communist superpowers? Prepare for potential military threats on the horizon? Address racial minorities, women’s rights, the ongoing recession, immigration and all the other challenges and opportunities presented to a world leader.
If you love narrative games as much as we do, check out Suzerain on Steam!
October Board Update
Hi there! Welcome to our first monthly developer update, known as the Board Update, to let you know how things are progressing on The Invisible Hand.
For the past few months we've been working on content production, blending market mechanics and narration with the help of our masterfully crafted master script by Will O'Neill and music composed by Felix Watson.
This is complex work as we're giving players a lot of freedom to act in opposition to the narrative, and want them to feel seen, while not going down too many narrative branches before our endings. We're achieving this by creating small branches that are quickly resolved and put back on track of the main branch, storing information about players' choices that affect the ending.
People can get angry if you don't do what you're told
In October, we worked on polish and bug fixes as development was slowed down due to health issues of our main developer, Ben. A round of playtest organized by one of our producers, Louis, brought a ton of good ideas. We decided to slow down the rhythm of the game a bit by making in-game days a bit longer. This is more work than it sounds like, as we had to rework timing for events in a lot of places. We’ve been reluctant to do this in the past because we liked having players feel pressured by time, but it was getting in the way of understanding and enjoying mechanics for a lot of players, so we caved to the lobbying.
Thanks for tuning into this Board Report, we appreciate the ongoing confidence and support of our cherished shareholders, and we assure you that together, we’ll make more money than you can imagine. See you next month!
Our publisher, Fellow Traveller is an indie games label publishing innovative story-driven games. Their newest game, Paradise Killer launches today!
Paradise Killer is an open world, murder mystery. Welcome to a whodunit tale where you get to decide who did the deed—you just have to PROVE it.
[previewyoutube="C5-uBBg2Ct4;full"]
On the eve of rebirthing a new Paradise Island, the Council of leaders is murdered and Paradise is killed. This is the crime to end all crimes.
You play as Lady Love Dies, an “investigation freak” who is summoned from exile to decide who the murderer is. Search for clues and find the evidence needed to accuse whoever you find guilty. Multiple suspects means multiple possible outcomes based on the evidence you discover and the choices you make.
What are the facts? What are the truths? Are they the same?
Indie Arena Booth is going online this year from August 27 - 30, and The Invisible Hand is a part of the line up!
The event features an in-browser game, where you can walk the digital convention floor and explore digital booths. Our demo was updated with new features and content for the occasion!
Our latest demo is available here for the duration of the Steam Summer Festival. We're excited to show our work !!
We're at a critical point in development where we want to polish the structure and systems of the game before focusing on content production so we would love to know what you think about the demo :)
If you're interested and want to delve deeper into trading gameplay, we have a few Steam keys to give that'll let you access a longer work-in-progress version, so let us know here, on TIG forums or by email at contact@powerstruggle.games
