Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

One workshop, built on borrowed money.
A few years later, your factories stand in every city, half your rivals' shares are in your hands, and before Parliament votes, MPs come to you first to ask what you think.

Snowball

Short of capital? Borrow it. Take out a bank loan, write IOUs to merchants, or sell part of your shares. Money goes into a factory, the profits go into the next factory, and a small business snowballs into one that runs in every city.

But the loan can fall due before the factory has paid for itself, and prices can drop just as your warehouse fills up. The faster the snowball rolls, the harder it crashes.

Takeovers

See a company you like? Buy into it on the stock exchange, a few shares at a time. Collect dividends as a shareholder first; once your stake is big enough, bid for the whole company, and yesterday's rival starts making money for you.

It works the other way, too. One day you may open your own company's share register and find that 30% of the shares already have new owners.

Corner the Market

Buy up the coal mines one by one, and every boiler in the country has to burn your coal. As for the competitors still standing: buy them out, or bring them into a trade accord where nobody is allowed to cut prices.

But goods will be shipped in from other cities, workers will strike at the worst possible moment, and cheap foreign goods keep arriving at the docks. So go to Parliament and get the tariffs raised. Just remember that when your business grows too big, an antitrust suit will come knocking.

Buying Parliament

What money can't fix, change the rules. Fund candidates, lobby MPs, promise one of them a favour in exchange for the vote that matters. Raise tariffs, cut taxes, limit working hours: a single vote can do more for you than ten new factories.

But MPs run factories and hold shares of their own, and the Lords, the Commons, the unions and the Crown each have their own agenda. Someone who took your favours today may side with your rival tomorrow.

More than a hundred named characters remember the favours you have done them, the promises you have made and the dirt that has fallen into other hands, and they will bring all of it to the table when they deal with you.

A Town in Your Name

From the Age of Steam to the Age of Finance, you can rise as a Captain of Industry, build a trust as The Monopolist, or pull Parliament's strings from behind the scenes. Different paths lead to different endings. Go furthest of all, and you can run the railway out to the frontier and raise a town named after you on empty land.

Cut wages and your profits go up, but your workers may strike and bring production to a halt. Grease a few palms and things get done faster, but every bribe can end up as leverage in someone else's hands. Strikes, audits and seizures are all waiting further down the line.

Online Mode

One deserted island, and every player lands on it at the same time. You can grab the best plots, link your shops into one unbroken street, then press the neighbour next door to sell you theirs; or you can go into partnership with other players and build up the island's trade together. Day by day the island grows into a city, and every plot of land and every seat in its parliament is won from real people.