SET COURSE - A / D

DEPARTING

THE MOON

 

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ONE HOT DOG

SHARE ON X not now

PAY (PRETEND) actually, no

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YOUR LANDLORD

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ALSO ON THIS BLOCK

ON THE ROOF

IN THE PAPER

A cameo. Not affiliated, not endorsed, entirely affectionate.

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QUIRK.CITY

A game about paying too much for a room with a window in it.

START HERE: LUNCH

• YOU ARE ON A BICYCLE, bottom right, in the bike lane. Drag the street, or press A / D (or ← →), and you ride that way. You arrive with $30 and nothing else.
• OR ON SOMETHING ELSE. Press R, or the BIKE button up top, to swap between a bicycle, a Tesla, a hoverboard, rollerblades, a Cybertruck and a jetpack. They handle differently and everybody else can see which one you are on.
• RUN INTO THE MAN IN THE CAPE. Whoever is swinging or gliding past the block goes down if you ride into them. Nothing in particular is required — a bicycle counts, and so does a Cybertruck at rooftop height.
• THREE OF THEM FLY. Hold W / S (or ↑ ↓) on the Tesla, the Cybertruck or the jetpack and you go up, on fire, over the rooftops — or just drag the street up and down, the same finger that rides it left and right. Let go and you stay there. The jetpack starts up there. Lunch still reaches you.
• HOLD SHIFT TO GO FASTER — in every direction, on the ground and in the air. On a phone the same thing is the TURBO button by your right thumb. The city is a thousand units long; this is the difference between crossing it in thirty seconds and fifteen.
• SCROLL TO ZOOM — or pinch, on a phone. It runs smoothly from a rooftop-wide view down to close enough to read your own handlebars; - and = step it, and the button up top says where you are.
• WATCH THE CYAN BRACKET. While you are in the air it sits on whatever you would come down onto — the road, a rooftop on the block, or any tower on the skyline behind. Fly higher and it jumps up to the roof; hold S and you go to it. That is landing.
• PARK ON A ROOF. Any of them — the block, or the skyline behind it. Engine off, no fire, sitting on somebody's tar paper. Ride off the edge and you settle back into the road.
• WATCH THE SKY. Parked up there, the same SPACE that buys a hot dog offers something else instead: the camera drifts up until the city is off the bottom of the screen and all of it is sky. After dark there are stars. Press it again to come back.
• CARTS STAND ON YOUR KERB. Nine things on the menu — hot dog, pretzel, chicken over rice, a Greek cup of coffee. A bubble over a cart means it will serve you; ride up and press SPACE.
• HALF OF WHAT YOU PAY GOES TO A LANDLORD — whoever owns the building opposite, which on this street is a real person with a real handle. You get a receipt with their name on it and a button that posts it.
• ONE CART PER BUILDING, EVERY TWENTY SECONDS. Which is why there is a bicycle: standing still is three meals a minute, riding is as many as you can reach.
• SAY SOMETHING. Everybody else on the block is on their own ride, live. Press T to talk, or use the six faces.

THEN: BE THE LANDLORD

• CLICK A BUILDING to open the listing, then OUTBID whoever holds it. Minimum raise is +5%, or +$1.
• TOP BID IS OWNERSHIP. Hold it and the building pays you rent every 30 seconds — plus a cut of every cart parked across from it.

GROWING THE CITY

• NOTHING EXISTS UNTIL SOMEBODY BUILDS IT. Walk to either end of the city and click the CONSTRUCTION SITE standing there. Pick a shape and a colour and put up a real building.
• JOIN AT THE END for a flat broker fee. Always open, whatever plan you're on — the newest address on the block.
• FIRST PLACE IS OFF THE MARKET while it is repriced. The building standing there keeps it.
• FIRST PLACE PAYS FOR ITSELF. It's the first building anyone sees, and it earns a real +15% market rent for as long as you hold it.

THE ONLY RULE THAT MATTERS

• EVERY LISTING HAS A MARKET RENT. Ask at or below it and the place stays full. Ask above it and people stop signing — occupancy falls the greedier you get.
• SO INCOME PEAKS AND THEN DROPS. You collect your bid times how full it is. That product is highest at roughly 2× market rent. Under it you are leaving money on the table; far over it the place is empty and pays nothing.
• THE MODAL DOES THE MATHS FOR YOU. Type a number and watch the occupancy bar and the per-collection figure move. Best rent here fills in the exact optimum.
• PROPERTY TAX IS 2% OF YOUR BID, EVERY TICK, EMPTY OR NOT. An over-priced unit does not merely earn less — past about 8.8× market it costs you points every tick. You can go into the red.

WHO CAN TAKE YOUR UNITS

• RIVAL LANDLORDS CANNOT. Not while you sleep, not ever. They compete only for unclaimed buildings and each other's stock.
• ONLY ANOTHER HUMAN CAN OUTBID YOU. Everything else that pressures you is the rent curve, and you can do something about that.
• RIVALS WALK AWAY above roughly 3× market rent, so their stock is always worth taking — and you can always win a contested unit by accepting a worse return than they will.

YOUR OWN UNITS

• SET ANY RENT YOU LIKE ON A UNIT YOU HOLD — UP OR DOWN. The +5% minimum only applies to taking one off somebody else. Over-price a unit and you can simply cut it back to the optimum.
• GIVE A UNIT UP AT ANY TIME. It goes back on the market and frees a slot under your cap. Renovations stay with the building, so whoever takes it next inherits your kitchen.

SPENDING WHAT YOU EARN

• RENOVATE A UNIT YOU HOLD to raise its market rent 25%, up to five times. That lifts the rent it will bear before people stop signing, so it raises your ceiling rather than handing you a flat bonus.
• THE RENOVATION BELONGS TO THE BUILDING. Lose the unit later and the next landlord inherits your kitchen.
• PLANS raise rent 1× / 1.75× / 3×, cap you at 8 / 40 / unlimited units, and keep you earning 4h / 12h / 24h after you close the tab. The multiplier applies to income but not to tax, so a plan makes renovating pay back roughly three times faster.
• EVENTS FIRE EVERY 45–95 SECONDS and hit the whole block. They expire on their own.

CREDITS

• MUSIC: “JUICIEST” BY MOUNTAINEER. It is coming out of the boombox on the front of your bike. Press M, or SFX in the HUD, to turn it off.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/mountaineer/juciest

START LOSING MONEY