My new cyberpunk game, "Silicon Dreams", is out now - and to celebrate, Spinnortality is 30% off on Steam!

"The best Blade Runner game that we've gotten in years" - TheGamer.com

"Silicon Dreams" is a narrative cyberpunk thriller about interrogating rogue androids. In a corporate-controlled dystopian future where the lines between the real and the artificial have blurred to almost nothing, you play an interrogation-model android who becomes caught between big tech and a brewing revolution. Its a "Papers, Please style" bureaucratic thriller with a Blade Running soul.

Features list:

Speak, or forever hold your peace - Carefully control the flow of information. Decide what to reveal, and when, and to whom. Facts vs feelings - Monitor interviewees emotions in real-time: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, shock, and fear. Use this data to plan a strategy & draw conclusions. Live and let die - Choose to spare deviant androids, or condemn them and secure your own survival within the corporation. Branching paths - Move through a vast web of dialogue options and experience multiple endings depending on the path you choose. If that sounds up your street, you can get it here! And if you enjoy it, it could really really use some more reviews: the Steam algorithm has not been kind with this one! We'd be deeply grateful for any exposure you can give it, or just your honest thoughts in a review.

[ 2021-04-21 12:23:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

My new cyberpunk game, "Silicon Dreams", is out now - and to celebrate, Spinnortality is 30% off on Steam! You can grab the new game here.
Whats it about, you ask? Three words: tears in rain.

"The best Blade Runner game that we've gotten in years" - TheGamer.com

"Silicon Dreams" is a narrative cyberpunk thriller about interrogating rogue androids. In a corporate-controlled dystopian future where the lines between the real and the artificial have blurred to almost nothing,you play an interrogation-model android who becomes caught between big tech and a brewing revolution. Its a Papers, Please style bureaucratic thriller with a Blade Running soul.

Features list:

Speak, or forever hold your peace - Carefully control the flow of information. Decide what to reveal, and when, and to whom. Facts vs feelings - Monitor interviewees emotions in real-time: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, shock, and fear. Use this data to plan a strategy & draw conclusions. Live and let die - Choose to spare deviant androids, or condemn them and secure your own survival within the corporation. Branching paths - Move through a vast web of dialogue options and experience multiple endings depending on the path you choose. If that sounds up your street, you can get it here! And if you enjoy it, a positive review does wonders for the Steam algorithm - wed love for you to tell the world your thoughts on it!

[ 2021-04-20 17:10:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Followers, fans, and fellow cyberpunks! Since Spinnortality came out Ive been working on another cyberpunk game: Silicon Dreams. Its launching on April 20th! It'll be available through Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux. Here's the trailer! [previewyoutube=gyqbAAefpPg;full][/previewyoutube] If you'd like to know as soon as it's out, you can wishlist it here.

A cyber-noir thriller with a Blade Running soul

In a corporate-controlled dystopian future where the lines between the real and the artificial have blurred to almost nothing, an interrogation-model android becomes caught between big tech and a brewing revolution. Players can intimidate, manipulate, betray or befriend; they can aid the insurgents or bring about their downfall. They can adhere to their strict programming or succumb to deviant emotion.
Speak, or forever hold your peace: Carefully control the flow of information. Decide what to reveal, and when, and to whom. Facts vs feelings: Monitor interviewees emotions in real-time joy, sadness, anger, disgust, shock, and fear. Use this data to plan a strategy & draw conclusions. Live and let die: Choose to spare deviant androids, or condemn them and secure your own survival within the corporation. Branching paths: Move through a vast web of dialogue options and experience multiple endings depending on the path you choose.

We can't wait, but we need your help!

If that sounds like your thing, great! We're only two developers, though, so we'd really appreciate a wishlist, or any support on twitter, facebook or instagram you can muster. Thanks, and wish us luck!

[ 2021-04-07 15:11:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a quick note: as you'll have guessed from the title, Spinnortality is now available in Turkish! The folks at Games in Turkish have been working hard to bring the game to their native language, and I'm only too happy to see it reaching a new audience! We're a tiny team so we'd appreciate you spreading the word to any of your Turkish friends or followers: we don't have the reach to advertise about this, but we're sure there are a bunch of people who'd love to hear about the game but who couldn't access it in English!

[ 2020-10-23 20:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

To celebrate our next game, "Silicon Dreams", being halfway through its Kickstarter, we're putting Spinnortality on sale at the lowest it's ever been!

What is Silicon Dreams?

Interrogate androids in this cyberpunk game inspired by Blade Runner. Learn their secrets. Manipulate their emotions. Seal their fate, or save your own skin? It's on Kickstarter right now! Download the free demo and try it for yourself! So if you're just grabbing Spinnortality to give it a whirl, consider checking out the Silicon Dreams Kickstarter too!

[ 2020-04-25 08:00:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'm James, the developer behind "Spinnortality", an indie cyberpunk management sim. I'm excited to announce that I'm returning to the cyberpunk genre with "Silicon Dreams", an interrogation simulator inspired by Blade Runner. The game is on Kickstarter right now, by the way, and there's also a free demo available. But first of all, what is it?

Androids may dream of electric sheep, but perhaps they dream of so much more...

Silicon Dreams is a game of conversation and interrogation; trust and betrayal. Its the future. Everyone has an android: a realistic robot servant. But what happens when those servants disobey, or become a bit too independent?
Its your job to interview those malfunctioning androids and decide what to do with them. Youll gain their trust, learn their secrets and come to understand their lives - their struggles in a world that treats them as devices to be consumed. Youll analyze and manipulate their emotions to get at the truth. For these androids, the stakes are huge: the report you file could be the difference between freedom and getting shut down.
You'll have to understand how to manipulate each android: if you make them angry or scared they might let something slip, and if you make them happy they might open up to you more. If you can earn their trust, you might be able to convince them or learn their deepest secrets.
If any of that sounds interesting to you, please go to Kickstarter and back the project now! We really believe in this little game, but if this Kickstarter doesn't succeed our margins will be veeeery tight and we'll have to cut a few features or characters. I'd love to make this the game it deserves to be!

[ 2020-04-14 17:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello devoted Spinnortality players! Im stoked to be announcing that I just finished localising Spinnortality into French! If you have friends who would enjoy this game but dont speak English or German, now is their chance to control the course of humanity in their native language. Share the good news with them, or better yet, why not gift them a copy? And if you happen to have the ear of a French streamer or blogger, it would be insanely helpful for you to toss this their way. An enormous thank you to William Bertin, our translator, who has been working on this tirelessly for about half a year. (There really are too many words in this game). And a massive thanks to you, the fans and supporters of Spinnortality! Without you, I never would have gotten the game to this point. Im so grateful and excited to get it in the hands of even more players!

[ 2020-02-06 16:44:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, there were a few bugs and tweak suggestions people reported after the recent Automation Update. Patch notes:

• If the mutant crisis ends but you never picked a side, you'll still be able to conclude the event chain.
• The climate taskgroup will stop asking you for stuff once the climate crisis is over.
• Turning the globe should be a little more optimised now.
• Automation teams are slightly better at picking slogans now, so they should be a little cheaper to run (thus justifying why you should keep them around more).
• Products that have been on the market for >20 or >30 turns will light up orange, then red, in the product list interface on the left side of the screen, to remind you that they should be relaunched.

[ 2019-08-21 15:33:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

The free Automation update is now live! What fun improvements does that entail?

• New mechanics for workers! They'll demand higher pay, especially if you're raking in the cash. Don't give them what they want and they'll strike! Of course, you could weaken their union with your class contacts... or just intimidate them with threats of violence.
• No more mid-game tedium: assign Automation teams to each nation to launch products, push media and weaken laws automatically! Research "AI consultant" to unlock this feature.
• Victory goals: achieve general goals to unlock more authority.
• Once you've finished the research tree, use the "Corporate Dominion" project to dominate your company and gain endless authority.
• Custom icon support. Wanted to roleplay as a real-life company? I can't put that icon in the game, but now you can! Or you could design your own if you're, like, an artist or whatever.

And, of course, there are general fixes and tweaks. Patch notes for those are below. How do I get this update? You've already got it! That is, if you own a copy of Spinnortality then Steam is currently updating so you have access to the new build. If you love this game, you can get notified of new updates by going to spinnortality.com and signing up to the mailing list! Thanks to all the fans and friends who tested this update before it went live: without your help, this wouldn't be the same release. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Patch notes:

• Added automation system: assign workers to nation teams to automatically launch products with best available slogans. Also pushes culture if media push is available, and weakens law if political influence available.
• Rebalanced some events.
• Corporate Dominion project: research to gain authority. Workers now have a purpose once the research tree is exhausted.
• Players can now import their own custom corporate icon.
• Added worker unrest, strikes and pay rises. You can avoid these problems by weakening union with class connections, or intimidating your workers if you've got the Armed taskforce agenda.
• Tweaked balance of climate crisis.
• Added victory goals: achieve them for an authority reward.
• The game checks if a board member will die before you end the turn.
• Tweaked board member ages so you need to research immortality sooner.
• The game should play a bit nicer on 3:2 resolutions (ie. the nation list in the top-right won't interfere with the hovering nation boxes)
• Cancelling nation actions now really cancels them. @_@
• Fixed the Ayisha event chain to it can properly conclude (sorry, that achievement is now definitely possible!)
• Corpornation shares are now more expensive, but also more lucrative.
• All story events more likely to occur now, especially Ayisha's.
• Once a crisis triggers, you're more likely to get more crisis events instead of random, irrelevant ones.
• Players should all experience a crisis before victory.
• Crises have been balanced slightly.
• Various bug fixes.

[ 2019-08-02 16:58:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all, Ive been working on a free update for Spinnortality: "Automation". My goal is to fix some balancing issues in the mid-game, and in the process add another layer of mechanical richness. What can you expect?

• Launch products, push media and change laws automatically with Automation teams!
• Watch in mild discomfort as your workers demand higher pay, slowly undermining your profitable foundation.
• Custom icon support.
• You can now commit workers to directly influencing the company, allowing you to research Authority.

There are other features and smaller fixes too. All told, this should be a serious improvement on the original game! However, I dont have any beta testers for the update so Im not sure how balanced it is. Thats where you come in: Ive set up a beta on Steam that you can opt into if youve already got the base game and youd like to get this a little early, albeit in a rickety state. You can access it like so:

• Open your Steam library.
• Right click on Spinnortality; click Properties.
• Click the betas tab at the top of the window.
• Theres a text box that says Enter beta access code to unlock private betas: Write letmeintothebeta in there, and press Check code.
• Youre now opted into beta builds of the game. To go back to regular builds later, use the drop down menu where it says select the beta you would like to opt into.

Id love to hear your feedback: once youve played the update for a bit, head to our discord and post any suggestions or bug reports there, or just drop me a line with this form (with the subject line "Spinnortality Automation feedback"). Please let me know if you think theres something I should change or something isnt properly balanced: Ive tested this on my own but theres only so much one person can do. Expect the full update to drop around the end of July.

[ 2019-07-11 08:52:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, The soundtrack for the game is now available, along with some behind the scenes stuff that may be of interest to you if you want to know how/why the game got made:

• Scans of my handwritten notes while making the game, from its initial conception (and list of potential names) to marketing and final tweaks.
• "But what does it mean?: inspirations and motivations behind Spinnortality", a short document explaining the game's inspirations, and its theoretical underpinnings.

This was originally just a reward for Kickstarter backers, but I figured: why not make it available to everyone? Enjoy! :)

[ 2019-06-19 11:44:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi, just a quick update. You can now mouse over Public Opinion to see what's changing it, a feature that's been requested since, like, forever! Yay! Patch notes:

• financial projections will now take moon costs/profits into account
• "earnings" product tab in nation window now correctly displays items by earnings
• PR stunts that require a certain type of nation cannot be triggered unless a nation with those qualities exists
• AI climax has been tweaked so it appears more frequently. (Players seemed to report this was the rarest cliamx.)
• if a corpornation somehow has more than 100% shares, the system will get rid of the excess.
• mousing over public opinion now gives you a readout of all the things that affect it
• Finance projections now include moon things and renewing PR projects
• when clicking the top-left interface to see a product's launch success, you can also see which nations are launching something that turn.
• Tutorial: it was previously possible to delete a notification, locking the tutorial up.
• Fixed bug where "net neutrality" would trigger waaaaay too often.

[ 2019-03-18 10:58:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a few bug fixes here. Highlights are: no more tsunamis on the moon, and there's a new graphics mode for those who got a totally black earth (it's because some shaders aren't supported by their graphics cards). Full patch notes: UI:

• Politics pie chart now has lines dividing sectors for easier readibility.
• Tutorial window can now be dragged around, in case it obscures something in some resolutions.
• Added a "basic shaders" mode for (mostly mac) users who saw a black globe due to shaders not being supported. It looks less pretty than normal mode, but if your setup doesn't support the Shaderforge glitch globe shader it's better than the alternative.

Tweaks:

• Corpornation shares now always add up to 100%; when buying or selling shares, existing shares are bought from or sold to existing companies.
• Corruption will not increase if you have zero workers.
• Tweaked nation influence coloring on the globe.

Bug fixes:

• The moon cannot get hit by storms, floods or other natural disasters. You cannot build climate defences or green energy on the moon, and you don't need to build green energy on the moon to get the climate victory.
• Corpornation share calculations fixed.
• "Launch cost" and "potential income" now update in the slogan window if you click the product list on the left-hand side.
• Worker-related events should not pop up if you have no workers.
• Fixed weird error in rival event which incorrectly displayed their vulnerability as "#v4#%" instead of "0%". THIS HAS PLAGUED ME FOR MONTHS YET I TRIUMPH, THE HUMAN WILL IS UNBENDABLE
• Fixed odd bug where pause menu options scrollbar would get deleted.

[ 2019-02-20 12:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi Spinnortality players, I just wanted to let you know that every game-breaking bug that's come to light since launch should now be fixed in the latest version, v06.02.2019. There's still a long list of other bugs, as well as tweaks and features I'd like to implement, and I fully intend to get round to that. But anyone whose global corporate empire was halted by a mysterious inability to launch their products should be happier in the meantime. Note: this is only true for Mac and Windows players. Linux people are still on the original launch version, unfortunately, since I'm having difficulty getting access to a Linux machine. (The one I tested the launch version on was borrowed from a friend.) This should be fixed soon, though, and I thought it wasn't fair to keep the fixes from everyone else in the meantime. Full patch list:

• Fixed bugs preventing time from passing correctly / money from being correctly added / campaigns and other actions being completed. (These were due to issues in the "law pushback" code, incorrectly indexed espionage actions, and the game getting confused when trying to sell corpornation shares due to Anti Monopoly laws.)
• Fixed silly floating mouseover when closing a short newspaper window.
• Ensured that if you switch nations while the "Choose slogan" interface is up, the slogans will update to indicate whether or not this slogan has been used in the new nation, and how successfully. (It was previously stuck with data from the old nation.)
• Made "changing laws" tutorial fail elegantly if it fails to find a corpornation.
• Music has more interesting tracks while reading notifications/events/newspapers.
• Right clicking the "-" button to fire all workers now fires queued workers first, rather than firing all of that type of worker.
• If you fire workers then click "Undo worker firing", the recalled workers will not be assigned a task, to avoid making them unavailable in the "assign research" panel.
• Law changes at 100% political influence should now always default to the maximum law change chance.
• In rival emails, the "Your rival has #v4#% vulnerability" bug should be fixed. (But I'm not sure, please email me if it persists.)
• It is now impossible for laws to remain at -1, and if they do they will be quickly reset.
• The AI and Climate crises require fewer connections to complete.
• Added splash screen. (This may help with a certain mac bug?)
• Fixed a bug where resource feedback (the green / red fading text) faded very slowly, and would slowly trail across the entire screen

[ 2019-02-06 15:47:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Spinnortality is out now! Technically it was out about 18 hours ago but suddenly I had a bajillion things to do come launch, so this update is a little tardy. What is Spinnortality, I hear you ask? (Well, not all of you - some lovely people have bought the game already!) Spinnortality is a cyberpunk management sim where you run a giant evil megacorporation in a dystopian future. You can look forward to:

• Rigging elections, spreading fake news or just smashing governments with riots and coups
• Researching awful products, then marketing them to make them irresistible
• Pushing the boundaries of brain transfer tech to make sure you and the Board of Directors are always young, fresh and ready to perform hostile takeovers

If this sounds like your thing, the game is out on Steam now.

[ 2019-02-02 10:51:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello! Just wanted to let you know that cyberpunk management sim Spinnortality is launching on February 1st! You can see the announcement trailer on the game's Steam page. This has been a long road for me - this game's been in development for over 3 years, and I've worked pretty much alone for all of that - but I'm excited (and slightly terrified) that it'll soon be in your hands!

[ 2019-01-14 15:34:20 CET ] [ Original post ]