Deadline Collapse: Ship It

In this update I implemented a full Hiring system. Now, instead of just clicking “Hire”, you also need to choose a role (Dev, Designer, or Manager) and the game generates 3 candidates. Each one has a random name, a specific salary, and—most importantly, a set of unique skills. I used a naming pool for each role to make the office feel more like a real place with different people.
I’ve also added specific skill sets for each role that directly affect the simulation:
Developers now have stats for Bug Fix, Speed, and Research Bonus. A good Dev can now generate RP (Research Points) faster or clean up the mess left by rushed features.
Now designers focus on Reputation Bonus and have a Motivation Aura. Having a good designer doesn’t just make the product look better but also keeps the rest of the team from burning out too fast.
And managers have skills like Cost Reduction and Event Risk Reduction. A high-level manager can also stop a bad random event from happening.

I also spent some time connecting these skills to the core engine. When you hire someone, it costs a flat fee of $1500, and their salary is added to the weekly costs. This adds a huge layer of strategy: Do you hire the expensive “Super Dev” to fix your stability issues, or a cheap “Junior” just to keep the features growing?

There are 2 new modals, one for the Research Points and another one for the milestones, so that you can actually see your objectives and what you win by accomplishing them(the RP one is still a bit laggy but i’ll fix it latter)
The game is actually starting to feel good to play and I want to change the center animation to more a 2.5d style

I took 5 hours to do this devlog because I was facing some weird bugs(and still am). I had to stop adding features for a bit to focus on making the game’s math almost bulletproof. My vision for the final project is that a complex system is only good if it doesn’t break. So my biggest bug that I still coudn’t completely solve wasthe “NaN” (Not a Number) bug that makes it so that some numbers like Bugs and Stability simply say NaN instead of the actual number.

The thing that I liked the most so far was the hability to create a new project with features that the user can choose, some features are blocked and can be unlocked with RP(research points), and the “develop feature” button now lets the user add a feature to the project or replace one that was already added(each project as a max of 3 features, but I plan to let the user unlock more with RP).

I’ve been trying to Harden the Simulation by implementing “Sanity Checks” across all formulas. Before, a single division by zero (like having 0 employees or 0 features) would crash the entire game state. But now, every calculation for revenue, stability, and bugs has a safety gate. I’ve used Math clamps to ensure that even in the worst-case scenario, the numbers stay within a logic range.

The financial engine is more realistic because weekly revenue is no longer a simple guess but intead its the direct result of your Product Stability x Market Reputation. If you ignore technical debt to rush features, the stability drops, which now exponentially drags down your income. It creates a realistic “Death Spiral” where one bad decision can slowly sink the company.

Also improved UI Reliability by updating the money counters and progress bars to handle edge cases. Even if the math hits a weird spot, the player is expected to see formatted, clean data instead of broken code(bugs sometimes, still have to fix some things).

And also fixed bugs where the office visuals didn’t match the background data.

In these last few hours, I’ve stoped a bit from building the office layout to coding the “nervous system” of the game. Implemented a Dynamic Vitals & Burnout System:
Employees now possess internal states for Energy and Motivation. Working actively drains energy, while idling restores it. I’ve added a critical “Burnout Loop”, once energy dips below 50%, motivation begins to crash, and the physical walk speed of the employee slows down, making the team’s exhaustion more visible to the player.
I’ve added the basics of a Weekly Summary system that calculates the company’s fate every 900 frames. Revenue is no longer a random number but a result of a formula involving Product Stability, Total Features, and Company Reputation. If you push your team too hard, the average motivation drops, which directly spikes the number of bugs generated each week.
To force the “absurd” difficulty I’m aiming for, I implemented a Modal Event system. You’ll now face dilemmas like the “Buggy Release”that makes you choose between shipping broken code (losing reputation), delaying (losing money), or force crunch (destroying team morale). It is now possible to spend capital to hire new employees or pay for team breaks to manually reset energy levels. Also added floating money text and status emojis (😤, 😴, 💻) so you can understand the room without looking at the raw data. And last but not least, I implemented a full LocalStorage save/load state so the collapse of your startup can be resumed at any time.

In these first hours I started building the core of the game, focusing on making the company feel alive rather than just numbers on a screen(animation on the center).
Right now, the office is fully rendered in a side-view layout, inspired by management games like Fallout Shelter, but adapted for a software company setting.(I plan in upgrading it later)

Implemented a basic employee system:
Each employee has a role (Dev, Designer, Manager)
They move around the office and return to their desks
They switch between idle and working states dynamically

The goal is to make every visual element reflect what’s happening in the simulation. Employees aren’t just cosmetic and their behavior will eventually tie directly into productivity, bugs, and team morale.
You can already click on employees to inspect their current state (working or idle), which will later expand into deeper management decisions.
This is just the foundation but my goal is to make a system where everything interacts, and bad decisions slowly lead to collapse.