Spinnortality Cyberpunk Management Sim

Review

You’re recruited by some high-powered business people who see you as the ideal partner to take control of a new company they’re funding. You will head this new company as CEO, and if you’re successful you’ll become wealthy with influence around the globe. All these people ask in return is that you research brain transfers and create replacement bodies for them before they die so they can become immortal. This cyberpunk management game is brought to you by James Patton.

Once you start a new game, you’ll have a few details to fill out before jumping in-game, like the name of your megacorporation, and choice of logo and its colour. Next its your first and last name, along with a choice of the nine portraits on offer. Then all that’s left to do is choose the games difficulty: Laisses-Faire will give you extra start-up capital, the board members are more patient and live longer, and your income is higher. Industry Standard has start-up capital and the income and board are normal. Then finally, there’s Highly Competitive, which give you low start-up capital, the board members are less tolerant and die sooner, and income is lower. Once you’ve decided on which difficulty to play, hit the start button for the game to proceed.

You’ll be then welcomed to the boardroom by Wes Cayne, along with four other board members. They explain that they are The Board, the backstage puppet-masters who work tirelessly to shape the world in their image. While they have vast resources at their command, and pull the strings which can topple governments or cause chaos through countries for their own gains, there’s one thing that even they can’t do, and that’s to cheat death.

The Board explains they want you to join them and although your career thus far has been economically mediocre with technical brilliance, they wish to change this. So, they generously supply the seed money for a new start-up company which you’ll head. All they ask is that you research brain transfer technology and manufacture replacement bodies for them in order to make them immortal.  However, if they die before you’re able to transfer them into new bodies, then it’ll be deemed a breach of contract and they’ll take you with them via an unpleasant failsafe implant. So, no pressure at all; how hard can it be to create immortals . . ?

You start with a few workers provided by The Board, and to help you take the company forward you have an AI assistant. The AI acts as like a tutorial and will pop up every now and then to assist you as you reach certain points within the game. To start with it will tell you The Board’s long term goals, which you’ll need to complete. These would be, keeping your company afloat, becoming powerful and wealthy, achieving immortality, and controlling the political landscape of the world; just the usual goals of any power-hungry immortal wannabe’s who want to control the world.

After this the AI will show you how to employ workers and how to put them to use in researching projects which will eventually (with any luck) unlock secrets of brain transfer. For now though, you’ll start with Social Media under Social Online in the research tree. Clicking on Social Media (or other research) will open a window to the right-hand side of the research tree. Here it will give you some information on the chosen research, the number of workers currently on a project and any workers who are not currently working on a project. It also gives you information about any effects a project has; for example, in the case of Social Media, you’ll get a +5% media power whereever it’s launched. You’ll also see if it can be Monetised, Labour Costs and Max Income.

The workers you start with consist of five interns and five regular employees; you’ll have to assign these workers to a project. This is easy enough and you can either add them one at a time, assign ten workers or assign the maximum number of workers you currently have for each type of worker. Adding a worker to a project will then reveal the number of turns it will take to complete the research of a project. This can take quite some time, so adding more workers will greatly reduce the length of time it takes to complete.

As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock new workers, like mutants or AI, which will do research a lot better and faster than the interns or regular employees you start with. You can employ new workers each turn, however it takes time for them to join your company. Interns take one turn to employ, while regular employees take two turns before you have them working for you. While interns are cheap and can be recruited quickly, they are less effective due to them being less experienced. They are also more likely to leave the company than regular employees or other workers.

Once a project has been researched, you then need to market your research so you can make money from it. To market something you use the Marketing Angles. There are five different marketing angles to each project you research. Only one marketing angle will be available to you after researching a project; you’ll have to unlock the others. To unlock more market angles, you’ll have to head back to the research tree; looking at Social Media (or other researched project) you’ll notice it has changed. Now it has a head with light bulb, five circles (with one filled in) and zero percentage.

The zero percent indicates that currently there’s no one working on new ideas for marketing your newly researched Social Media. As you did when researching Social Media, you’ll need to assign workers to come up with marketing ideas. Each time you assign a worker the percentage will climb; you’ll need to get the percentage above 100% as this will give you a new angle to market and if you’re lucky, more than one. The number of workers needed to go over the 100% will depend on the type of workers you have assigned.

Once you have a marketing angle you can use it to launch your project in one of the global regions and start bringing in that lovely dosh. The global regions on offer to you are North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Russia, Asia, North Africa, South Africa and Oceania. Each region has different cultures, and there are seven variables which determine a regions culture.

These variables sway between Individualism and Collectivism, Security and Freedom, Spirituality and Material Wealth, Privacy and Publicity, Quality and Convenience, Tradition and Novelty, Xenophobia and Multiculturalism. A marketing angle will apply to one of these variables, so say you have a marketing angle that is more inclined towards privacy, using an angle which promotes publicity isn’t going to do so well. To maximise your income from each project you launch you’ll need to have the marketing angle which fits that region best. A marketing angle will have some information about it; it might not always be clear as to where it could best be used, but you can use a Focus Test to reveal whether it’s best for one culture variable or another.

To sell a project, all you do is select a region which opens a window and tells you about that region, culture, government, politics, media. Here you’ll also find any products you’ve unlocked so far, selecting the product will then open another window with any marketing angles you currently have, so choose the one you think goes best with this region. In the marketing angles window, it also tells you the cost of launching your product and the potential income you could receive.

Once you’ve done everything you need to do, you can hit the hour glass in the bottom right corner to end this turn. Each turn is equal to six months; upon a new turn you’ll have some inbox mail informing you of new workers starting, or other news. Now and then The Board will set you some short-term goals as you progress; completing goals can increase your public and board opinion but failing to do so may lose some opinions. All income and expenditure will be updated each turn and you’ll also be informed on any new projects or marketing angles.

As you progress and your company grows, you’ll have to navigate an ever-changing world, as regions can change their cultural ideas. You’ll have to deal with public opinion as well as The Board’s, corruption, inefficiency, as well as influence governments and laws so that you’re able to sell your produces or pay less tax. Create chaos and destabilise a region, then take advantage as the government collapses to install a new regime, one which favours you. You can also stabilise regions if it benefits you and sometimes it’ll be a task given to you by the Board. Use espionage to influence media, impose order to a region to bring back prosperity, crash stock markets and military coups.

To beat the game, you’ll need to complete all the long-term goals set to you by The Board, and you’ll also need to reach fifteen points in one of four victory categories, while completing the requirements set in each category. The four categories consist of Imperial, Consumerism, New World and Humane victory. The requirement for you to gain a Humane Victory, for example, is fifteen points.  All nations have a democratic government and all nations have their tax laws at maximum. To gain the points you’ll have to unlock Agendas in Black Ops, Education, Media, Reform, Corporate Law and Aid. In each of these agendas there are five options to unlock, and each agenda costs some Military, Class and Cyber connection points (which you’ll earn as you progress through the game); depending on which ones you unlock, you’ll gain points for the victory categories.

In the options, you’ll find Sound, Music and Master volume controls (0-100), Shader mode, Language (English or German). There are also options to customise how the globe (Earth) looks, Nation Boxes, Planet Flare, Flare Light (On/Off) Globe City Details and Globe Turn Speed. The graphics can be set in the Unity window when you start the game up.

I’m not the best at these types of games but so far, I’ve really enjoyed playing. The AI which pops up now and then to tutor you as you unlock something new is nice and helps your progress. It’s not too complicated to play but it’s not easy either to complete all your goals and keep your head above water. The graphics look nice, the sounds and music are good, and when playing the game, time just seemed to disappear. Now I just need to learn that it’s a marathon and not a one-hundred metre sprint to the finish line.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!