Download Stick Life: The Daily Grind Demo

About This Game

If you grew up playing Stick RPG in a school computer lab, this is that game, if somebody had kept building it for twenty years.

You start in a tent with $25. The city runs on its own clock, a day every 24 real minutes, and fifty people in it go to work, walk their dogs and get into fights whether you're around or not. There's no story to follow. Get a job and climb, or go back to school, or drag race down Main Street, or break into the shop next door and sell what you find. Buy a dog. Buy a tiger. Buy an apartment building. Blow the lot at the blackjack table and start again in the morning.

Nothing ends the game. Run out of health and you wake up in hospital with a bill. Miss rent and you get five days before you're back in the tent. You can lose money. You never lose the save.



Everybody in town has a name, a job, a home, a schedule and friends of their own, and a few of them are already dating each other. Talk to people and they warm to you, or they don't, and they remember things: the fight you picked last week, the new car, the face tattoo, the five days straight you worked and the state you're in because of it.

Make friends and they'll text you to come out. Ask somebody out, go on dates, move in, get married. Or make a rival and live with that instead.

Off the clock they walk their dogs, shoot hoops and play tennis, and a few of them run a little something on the side. Beth and Vernon will play you at chess. Crispy deals three-card monte and cheats anyone they don't know. Buster sells seats for tonight's fight.



BusinessCorp is the big ladder. Apply, sit through the interview, work your shift, and keep asking your manager for the promotion until the corner office is yours. Then buy the company and let it pay you instead.

If a tie isn't your thing there are other ladders: the construction site, the restaurant kitchens, the warehouse dock. Hold as many jobs as you like. After your shift there is usually overtime going somewhere across town, and now and then somebody on the street will pay you to sort out a problem of theirs.

College, university and the trade school get you the paper the next promotion asks for. The rest is on you: study at the desk, lift at home, time your reps at the gym, and turn up looking like you slept.



The good money is in the gigs, and you play every one of them yourself.

• Headline a rock show at the Half Moon. It's a rhythm game on real recorded tracks, and the crowd knows when you miss.
  
• Do stand-up at the Velvet Riff. Land the punchlines on the beat and deal with the hecklers.
  
• Take penalties on game night at the Crucible.
  
• Train an AI model at Cortex. Yes, really.
  
• Fight for the title belt.
  
• Drag race down Main Street. Jack has ten rivals waiting, and each of them will race you once a day.

The better you get at the skill behind each one, the more it pays.



Not everything in this city is honest work.

• Break-ins. After closing, the shops, the offices and a few of the houses are yours if you can get through the lock. Search the place and fence the lot at the pawnshop. Better locks take a steadier hand, and the only way to learn lockpicking is to pick locks.
  
• Hotwiring. The dealerships close at night. The cars are still on the lot.
  
• Kody's coat. He starts you on fake watches and works up to a replica painting worth ten grand. Sell to the shady types you meet. The honest ones say no, and every no gets you noticed.
  
• Heat. Get enough of it and the police come looking, and they're faster than you. Make it to your own front door and they'll let it go until tomorrow. Get caught and they take a cut of everything you own, plus your contraband and your best weapon.
  
• Weapons. The pawnshop drawer runs from a copper pipe to a bazooka, with a few things in between that are only jokes. Carry a gun and the drunks stop jumping you on the walk home.

Fights are combos, and the more you train, the longer the chain.



Other ways to get rid of money:

• A better address. Tent, studio, apartment, a penthouse in the Pinnacle, a townhouse on the Uptown mews, a mansion on Cash Money Oaks. Or the Crack Shack behind the pawnshop: no rent, no power bill, no tax, ever.
  
• Other people's addresses. Ten rental buildings that pay you every night, from a fixer-upper to the Pinnacle itself. Buy the Slumlord Specials and you'll never pay rent again.
  
• Build mode. Furnish every room from six stores, cardboard through designer. Rugs go under the sofa, lights hang from the ceiling, a fireplace cuts the heating bill. Then have Construction Co. put a pool, a tennis court and a swim-up bar in the yard.
  
• The garage. Two dealerships, every car with its own engine note, and motorcycles from a moped to a superbike. Cars wear out and want servicing. Bolt on speed parts, then see Certified Crankers for paint, rims and underglow, or More Than You Can Afford Customs if you're driving an Apex. Until then a skateboard gets you around. So does a pre-owned ostrich, if you've got half a million dollars and don't ask about the three previous owners.
  
• Looks. Clothes do things, and the right shoes make you faster. Get a cut at Catch a Fade, or a face tattoo at a place called Bad Decisions.
  
• The money itself. A bank that pays interest, a loan desk that collects every morning, ten stocks, daily lotteries and scratch cards.
  
• The city. Pay to fix the sidewalks and the potholes, then build the park, the library and a new hospital wing.
  
• A billion dollars. Give it all away at the statue and start a new life with your perks. It gets harder every time.

Adopt a cat or a dog from the shelter, which is called Someone Else's Pets. Strays live rough in three parts of town, and the right snack will win one over. If that's too tame, the Menagerie up at Shop N Slop Plaza sells a monkey, an anaconda, a wolf, a tiger and an elephant.

Pet them, feed them by hand, carry them around. Put them in hats, sunglasses and gold chains. Buy them beds and toys, and set up an aquarium anywhere from a goldfish bowl to a reef tank. Keep as many as you want. The elephant will sit on your furniture now and then. The dog will eat your shoes.



Dice, slots, blackjack and the wheel at the casino. The horses at the Salty Soup, the biker bar. League night at Big Ray's Bowl-O-Rama, then pinball in the corner. Trivia night at Wine Moms Incorporated. Buy a stolen arcade cabinet off the pawnshop for the living room. Or stay in and play MICRO LIFE, a tiny life sim on your own computer, inside the life sim.



Nobody tells you what to do, but if you want a direction there are fourteen quest roads: climb to the corner office, run the watch racket, fall in love, fill the garage, win the belt, get every stray off the street. Every step pays cash, from your first hundred dollars to ten million for the deed, and the map shows you which door to knock on.



Up to four players over Steam or LAN, with friends or in public games. Everyone gets a house on the same street in Cash Money Oaks. Sleep on a friend's couch, hand them your old furniture, bail them out of jail, spar with them, or lose money on the same horse together. One whole quest road only works with friends.

• Five districts of hand-drawn isometric pixel art, with day and night, four seasons, rain and thunderstorms
  
• A phone with apps: texts, cabs, tow trucks, your stocks and the police scanner
  
• Ten character slots, each life saved under its own name
  
• Full controller support
  
• 60 Steam achievements
  
• A one-hour demo, if you'd rather see for yourself

DRANGUS STUDIOS — ARTISANAL AI SLOP, EST. 2026
Our prompts are locally sourced, hand-curated, and lovingly aged in Opus.
No mass-produced, three-prompt Sonnet garbage.
Every asset is inspected, refined, and personally screamed at by our solo developer.
Our clankers are free-range. Our tokens are ethically stressed. Our slop is Michelin-starred.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Stick Life is designed and directed by a solo developer. Some of the game's code, its in-game writing, the artwork the game draws, the achievement icons and parts of this store page were made with the help of generative AI tools, then played, reviewed and edited by the developer. Nothing is generated by AI while you play.