StartupSwipe

The board wants numbers

The company’s tower at dusk, cut open floor by floor: offices full of people, a café and a copycat next door, and basements dug deep into the ground.

StartupSwipe is a pixel art management game. Augusto puts you in charge of his startup with twenty-four thousand dollars and a garage. Every quarter, the board wants numbers. You can give them the ones you have, or the ones they’d like to see.

  • App StoreiPhoneComing soon
  • Google PlayAndroidComing soon
  • SteamWindows and macOSComing soon

About the game

Augusto

Here’s twenty-four thousand dollars. For a garage, that’s a fortune.

With that, Augusto puts you in charge of his startup. StartupSwipe is a pixel art management game, and it starts in a garage with two people and an idea that doesn’t work yet.

Day 1 in the garage. Three people code under the company sign, and the empty floor upstairs is for sale.

You could spend your nights coding so you have something to show. Or you could go out and sell it before it exists. Selling is faster, but sooner or later somebody’s going to want what you promised them.

Demo Day. You answered “Thousands” instead of “0 customers”, and a judge says “That doesn’t add up.”

If things go well, you’ll outgrow the garage, and every new floor brings new people with problems you didn’t have before.

The tower in chapter V, with floors full of people at work, a café next door and the vault in the basement.

Every quarter, the board wants numbers. You can tell them the truth, but the truth hurts. You can also dress it up a little. Maybe they won’t notice.

The board asks for active users. You pick Smoke, “A hundred thousand and climbing,” and the answer is “That scales.”

Just remember, whatever you dress up doesn’t go away. It piles up, and the higher you climb, the more people want a look.

A bug on the support floor becomes “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature,” and one more box of smoke shows up in the vault.

Everyone on your team has a first and last name. Earn their trust, and they’ll help you get to the top. But be careful. Getting too close to someone can turn into a conflict of interest, and that’s a trip to HR. Or worse, it could cost you your job.

A talk with someone on your team. You pick an answer, and a heart pops up over her.

And you’re not the only company on the block. The one across the street copies everything you do, and it’s offering your people a little more than you pay them.

The street at lunch. The café downstairs, and the copycat’s glass office next door.

On inspection day, there’s a cable nobody should see. The sensible thing would be to unplug it. Then again, sneaking it past the inspector has its charm.

A minigame: slip between the guards’ cones of sight and hide in the crate.

There are five chapters and twelve endings.

Which one you end up with depends on everything you said to get there.

iPhone and Android

Chapter I is free, start to finish. If you want to see how far your company goes, chapters II to V come together in one in-app purchase: the Full Game. You pay once. No subscription, no ads.

  • App StoreComing soon
  • Google PlayComing soon

Windows and macOS

On Steam, it’s the whole game in one purchase, with nothing to buy inside.

  • SteamComing soon

In English, Spanish and Italian.

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