Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

From Workshop to Trust

Not enough capital? Borrow it. Bank loans, IOUs to merchants, shares in your own company: whatever can be turned into cash gets turned into cash, and every penny of it goes into your first factory.

Once that factory is running, its profits pay for a second. The second makes money, so you open a third. By the time you look up, the mines that supply you are yours, the shops that sell your goods are yours, and half the factory whistles in town are blowing for you.

But the market won't keep rising just because you are. Put up too many of the same works and prices fall overnight; the loans fall due before the new factory has paid for itself. If you haven't kept enough cash in hand by then, you'll give back everything you made.

The Stock Market Is a Battlefield

Got your eye on a company? No need to knock on the owner's door. Buy its shares on the exchange, a few at a time. Sit quiet as a small shareholder and collect the dividends, then keep buying without a sound. By the time the owner realises most of his company is already in your hands, your takeover bid is lying on his desk.

Yesterday he was fighting you for customers. Today he is making money for you.

Of course, the other capitalists are watching you too. One day you may open your own company's share register and find that 30% of it has quietly changed hands.

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 few competitors left standing, the willing ones join your trade accord and the rest you simply buy out. Nobody gets to undercut anybody.

But coal still comes in from other regions, foreign goods land at the docks by the shipload, and your workers always pick the week the orders are tightest to go on strike. That's when you pay Parliament a visit and get the tariffs raised. Just know that once a business gets this big, an antitrust suit is never far away.

Parliament Is Open for Business

Some things money alone can't fix. So change the rules instead. Fund candidates, lobby MPs, promise one of them a favour in return for the vote that decides it. Raise a tariff, cut a tax, and you'll get more out of it than out of ten new factories.

But MPs aren't fools. They run factories and hold shares of their own, and they check their own books before they vote. The Lords, the Commons, the unions and the Crown are each playing their own game. The MP who took your favours last month may be dining at your rival's table this month.

A Hundred People Who Never Forget

More than a hundred named characters live in this world, each with a business and a temper of their own.

They remember exactly who you helped, what you promised and to whom, and who is holding dirt on you. Bring them a deal and they'll agree, refuse or haggle. Fail to keep a promise, and the next time you come calling you'll get a very different welcome.

Easy Money

There is no shortage of ways to make money fast. Squeeze wages and your profits jump at once. Put children on the payroll and you save a bit more. Grease the right palms and the matter is settled by the next day.

Only, workers go on strike, your name starts to stink, and every bribe can end up as leverage in someone else's hands. Audits, fines, a seal on the factory door: the only question is how far you dare to go.

A Town in Your Name

The game opens in the Age of Steam, runs through Railway Mania and carries on into the Age of Finance.

Some players stick to industry and put a factory in every city. Some build a trust and swallow an entire industry whole. Some never show their face, and yet every vote in Parliament leans their way. Different roads lead to different endings.

Whoever goes furthest runs the railway all the way to the frontier and, on a patch of empty land, raises a town named after themselves.

Online Mode: Fight Real Players for an Island

Every player lands on the same deserted island at the same time. The quick ones grab the best plots first, join their shops into one unbroken street, then lean on the neighbours one by one until they sell. Others team up with a few players and build up the island's trade together.

Day by day the island grows into a city. And this time, everyone fighting you for land and for seats in Parliament is another player.