Dear Startup Company players,

We have some exciting news to share with you. We are introducing a new version of the game that has been optimized for use with controllers. This means that the game will be fully compatible with the Steam Deck and other controller-based devices.

We recommend that players on desktop computers continue to play the regular version of the game as it provides the best experience in terms of gameplay, modding, and overall performance. However, if you prefer to play using a controller, the new controller-optimized version of the game will provide an equally immersive and enjoyable experience.

Please note that the controller-optimized version of Startup Company will not support modding, and savegames between the two versions are not compatible/shared.

To choose between the two versions, simply start the game as usual and you'll be prompted to select the desired game version:


Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for Startup Company. We hope you enjoy the new controller-optimized version of the game!

Sincerely,
Hovgaard Games

Hi everyone,

We're incredibly happy and equally scared to finally release our new game, Big Ambitions, into Steam Early Access.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550/Big_Ambitions/


Big Ambitions is the successor to Startup Company. While Startup Company was all about large internet-based businesses, Big Ambitions focuses much more on the small retail businesses that grow to become huge empires.

To quickly give you an understanding of the game, here's a list of its key features:

• Huge Business Sandbox - Go from nothing to the most prominent tycoon in New York. Whether one business or multiple, work smart and make them thrive.
  
• Grow any Business - Start your own gift shop, supermarket, coffee shop, or law firm. Whether it’s a single shop or making millions developing websites from a basement.
  
• Incredibly In-depth - Take out a loan, rent multiple buildings, design their logos, renovate your stores, grab stock, manage your money, hire staff, and create your infrastructure.
  
• Life Sim on Steroids - Need a delivery truck? Travel to a dealer and buy one. Need food? Head to a supermarket, just make sure you have a refrigerator back at home.
  
• Own New York City - Enter any building in New York and buy it. Go from a small apartment to a dream penthouse in midtown or buy a series of skyscrapers.
  
• Fast Cars or Investment Funds - Spend your wealth however you wish. Buy a big SUV, a speedy sports car, or the new luxurious Mersaidi S500. Maybe even risk it all at the casinos.
  
• Make it to Retirement, or don't - Make sure you get enough sleep and stay healthy and happy. Enjoy the journey, for as you grow older, you’ll discover that money can’t buy you time... or can it?

If you want to read more about our journey developing Big Ambitions, as well as its Early Access Roadmap, I recommend checking out the official Steam announcement:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1331550/view/3653020827586553519

We really hope you'll like it and thank you so much for reading!

All the best,

Jonas and the Big Ambitions team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550/Big_Ambitions/

Hey everyone,

We have exciting news to share! Startup Company will expand business to PlayStation 5|4, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023!

It is available to wishlist now:

Xbox:
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/startup-company-console-edition/9n43wgrsm8nx

Playstation:
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10004684

Nintendo:
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/startup-company-console-edition-switch/

If you’ve been a fellow entrepreneur with us on PC over the years, we can’t thank you enough. We’re so happy that over 400k of you have been enjoying the businesses you’ve built. When bringing this dynamic corporate environment to consoles, we will present Startup Company in a new light with new UI/UX features.

While the original version of Startup Company was built using HTML/Javascript, Startup Company Console Edition was developed in Unity. You’ll be creating a fresh company from scratch with the features you know and love, all perfectly suited for console platforms. Get ready for a new class of corporate competition!

We can't wait for you all to experience our new console edition. As always, we are available via Discord, Twitter, Email, Instagram, or the comments below. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your continued support!

- All of us at Hovgaard Games

Hi everyone,

Long time no talk! I hope you're all doing amazing :schappy:

After 1 year of development, we're proud to finally announce our next upcoming game:




Big Ambitions is my personal successor to Startup Company. It's the game I always wanted to play, both as a kid and as an adult.

As of today, you can now access and follow our Steam Coming Soon page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550

Similar to "Startup Company", I'll be covering all development through devlogs, both on the website and the Steam page. There are already 16 devlogs waiting for you.

As I'll stop posting about "Big Ambitions" on the "Startup Company" community hub, I really hope you'll take your time to click the wishlist and follow me on the Big Ambitions store page. That way I can keep you updated on all the exciting stuff coming in the future 😊

I can't wait to hear what you think of what we have made so far. If you have any questions please don't hold back asking! Discord, Twitter, email, Instagram, the comments below, whatever channel you prefer 😎

Thank you so much for reading!

All the best,
Jonas and the Big Ambitions team

• Fixed broken link to Localizor: https://www.localizor.com/startup-company/
  
• Updated all languages
  
• Added Czech support
  
• Added Indonesian support

Hey there!

After working on my first game Startup Company for more than 5 years, I’m finally ready to announce the title of my next game:

Big Ambitions

The website is online too: https://www.bigambitionsgame.com

To give you a better understanding of what Big Ambitions is all about, we should take a look at the beginning of the game.



To give you an understanding of what Big Ambitions is all about, we should start at the very beginning of the game:

You’re eighteen years old and living in your parents’ apartment in downtown New York. You have big aspirations to make money and become successful.

However, before you can start on your journey, you need to earn some money.

The city offers hundreds of jobs, from flipping burgers to driving New Yorkers around in a taxicab. It’s up to you to decide which path you take.

With a few thousand in the bank, you can finally rent your own space and start working on your empire. Most tycoons start simple: A restaurant, a small supermarket, or even an auto repair shop. It’s up to you, try to choose something that’s in demand for the specific area of the city you’re staying in.

As you continue along your journey to success, both your wealth and life will change. With more money comes more problems.

Your goal in Big Ambitions is to become the biggest city tycoon in New York. Your daily tasks will vary between:

• Buying & selling real estate
  
• Setting up and managing businesses such as restaurants, supermarkets, offices and more
  
• Securing deliveries of goods for your businesses
  
• Renovating owned properties
  
• Managing employees
  
• Taking care of yourself by sleeping, eating, working out and more

The game comes with a full day & night cycle following a real-life schedule with rush hours, weekends and more.

You have 3 main factors to maintain: Energy, Hunger and Happiness. To function as effectively as possible, you need to keep all three in balance.

As aforementioned, your journey starts at the age of eighteen, but as you play your character will move through the three stages of adulthood (each having their own advantages and disadvantages):

• Young
  
• Middle-aged
  
• Old

Big Ambitions is my first game developed with an industry-standard game engine: Unity 2020. Unlike Startup Company, the game will be 3D and you will control your character using a point-and-click navigation system (similar to the one found in the Diablo franchise). However, vehicles will be controlled using the keyboard.

The game is viewed from an isometric top-down camera angle and you’ll be able to zoom in, zoom out and rotate the camera which will always follow your character.

The game will be set in the bustling centre of New York City. I focus on ensuring that the streets feel as authentic as possible since I really want you, the player, to feel like part of New York City. As part of my quest to deliver an authentic city experience, I’m making it so that every building in the city can be interacted with and owned. The first public build (Beta 1) will come with the following city map:

I expect the final map to be 4 times bigger.

Similar to Startup Company, I’ll be the only developer working full time on the game. Fortunately, I’ll be hiring contractors to help me produce some core components such as the 3D models, complex Unity systems, UI design, music and sound effects.

I plan to release devlogs showcasing the progress on average once a week. I’ll also continue streaming the development on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jhovgaard

Since I have, no pun intended, big ambitions for the game, I expect at least 2 years of development before the first build is ready for the public. It’s definitely a long time away but I don’t want to take any shortcuts so that I can provide the best possible experience.

I’m determined to build a game that does more than entertain you - something that makes you dream big after closing the game.

I hope you’re as excited about Big Ambitions as I am. I cant wait to show you what I’ve got lined up for future devlogs, so make sure to subscribe to the newsletter on the website[/b].

Thank you for reading!

All the best,
Jonas

Hi everyone!

Today is the day! After four years and nine months of hard work, I can finally and proudly announce the Full Release of Startup Company!

If you read my special devlog about how Startup Company became a thing, you can probably imagine how excited I am about this. Today is the day I'm releasing the game I've been dreaming about. Startup Company is now officially out of Early Access.

I hope you're ready for this, because this update will be much longer than you're used to. Here's what's new in Version 1...

By popular demand, you can now start the following two new website types: Dating Platform & Gaming Platform



A new Profile Page feature is now available for all Gaming & Dating platforms.



With the new website types, I had to add some new competitors too. I asked my colleague Mark for some help naming these new competitors. As you can see, he was surprisingly creative!



Some of you really wanted to be able to retire early. I've listened and you can now find a "Retire now" button in your CEO's Retirement menu.



I got more requests for this feature than I could count. Now it's here, upgrade all your employees at once!



In order to get a nice balance between simulating a day's work and the progression of years, I've ended up shortening a year to 50 days in Startup Company. Some of you really did not like that, so I added the option to define the length of a year through the Custom Game menu:



This feature request has been so popular that you'll even find mods adding the functionality. I'm happy to report that it's now natively in the game. Obviously websites can only be sold if you've already bought out all the investors.



As Version 1 introduces a "direct download" option, I have created an achievements menu in-game, meaning achievements are no longer limited to Steam users.



We've now got some new cool items for your office:

• Huge Slide: What's a big headquarter without a huge slide?
  
• Game Console Area: Again, a sign of success. You need it.
  
• Large Plant & Rectangular Plant: This is the sequal to the current "plant in a vase."
  
• Indoor Tree: Big offices always have indoor trees for some reason. Now you can too.
  
• Privacy Walls: Give your employees a bit more privacy with these walls.
  
• Privacy Box: A box canceling all noise coming from inside it. Very modern.
  
• Egg Chair: Probably the most expensive chair in the world.
  
• Letters (A-Z): Motivate (or unmotivate) your employees with these letter-shaped objects.

All the new items except the letters can be demanded by new employees and come with various new bonuses.



Most of you have probably experienced losing a good employee, simply because you didn't accept a salary raise in time. You can now let your HR Managers handle this.



The production plans has now been moved to an independent tab of the Inventory Menu. Options to more precisely control production behavior has also been added.

• Fixed components incorrectly shown as locked.
  
• "Game paused" shown when the time machine running.
  
• Slider's maximum salary too low.
  
• Limited Help System to one instance per website.
  
• Reduced organic growth.
  
• Introduced Jeets earlier in the game.
  
• Added logo selector to "new game dialog."
  
• Improved auto-save to save only after further progression.
  
• Added random name generator to "new game" dialog.
  
• HR manager's exhaustion is now easier to understand.
  
• Newly hired employees can no longer be fired right away.
  
• Fixed overlays causing people to get stuck on slower computers.
  
• Fixed bug allowing outsourcing tasks to be completed instantly.
  
• Purchased furniture can now be sold again.

As with any release, there will of course be bugs and changes that need rebalancing. As always, I'll monitor the Steam discussions and apply hotfixes ASAP.

I'm also planning on releasing a few updates to address various UI/QOL issues.

So much! As we're now a full-blown company with the resources to explore multiple paths, our roadmap looks like this:

With Localizor we're revolutionizing the way games are translated by building an intelligent and community/crowd-based platform. We'll continue to invest heavily in improving the platform.
https://www.localizor.com

I can't count how many times I've been asked, "Is there another game coming from Hovgaard Games?" I can finally reply with a confident "Hell yes!"

We're already busy creating the first concept art and I can't wait to show you everything. For now, I'll give you a few hints:

• It's once again a tycoon/management game.
  
• The camera angle is topdown/isometric and the gameplay is something we're confident you have never seen before in this genre.
  
• The budget for the new game is 50 times (!) bigger than it was for Startup Company.

Make sure to follow Hovgaard Games on Steam to stay updated!

Once again! I hope you enjoy Startup Company – now in it's final form ːschappyː

Thanks for reading and for your continuing support!

All the best,
Jonas and the Hovgaard Games team

Hi there,

Just a quick update to remind you that the full release of Startup Company is now less than 24 hours away! ːschappyː

I honestly have no idea how I'm going to get any sleep tonight. I'm so excited to finally share the full version of Startup Company with you.

The time of release is 10am PST / 19:00 CEST. There will be a release event on our Discord server where I'll be running a small Steam key giveaway to those of you (or your friends) who still haven't purchased the game. You can join us here:


I want to thank all of you who helped translate the remaining strings on Localizor. All languages have reached 100% except Korean and Japanese. Those will be added later. If you want to contribute the link is: https://www.localizor.com/game/1/translations

Lastly, I have to end with a sneak peek. Ready for some new furniture?



See you tomorrow, it's going to be a big day!

All the best,
Jonas

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all as excited about the full release as I am. There's only 14 days left now and we're super busy fixing the last bugs and issues. I really want to make sure everything works flawlessly when you receive it.

However, as the title indicates: I need your help translating the rest of the game!

Currently the following languages have untranslated content:


If you speak any of these languages fluently (and have decent grammar skills), I would really appreciate any help over at Localizor:


https://www.localizor.com/game/1/translations

That's all for today :-)

Stay safe everyone and enjoy the weekend!

All the best,
Jonas

Hi everyone,

I'm super happy to finally share the official release date of Startup Company:


This means the game will finally move out of Early Access and into full release. I have decided not to increase the price and keep the current $12.99 (or your regional equivalent).

Make sure to visit the official website and sign up for the countdown. By signing up, I'll send you an email 1 hour before Version 1 releases!

Check it out here: https://www.startupcompanygame.com



Will there still come new content to the game, as usually?
No. Version 1 is the last content update.

What if I find a bug, will it be fixed?
Yes! All bugs we might have been missed will be fixed as usual through hotfixes.

Will Startup Company continue to work on future Operating System updates?
Yes, we'll continue to support the game and bring updates if necessary.

Is there any DLC planned?
Not currently planned, no.

Is Startup Company coming to other platforms?
Yes. We expect to release on XBox, Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Official annoucement will come later this year.

Can you tell anything about future games coming from Hovgaard Games?
No comments ːschappyː

Will there ever be a Startup Company 2?
No comments ːschappyː

I'm super excited to show you version 1! Stay tuned :-)

Thanks for reading!

All the best,
Jonas