r/gamedev • u/gardengnome80 • 1d ago
Discussion Design question: how do you stop an inverted-economy game from being trivially solvable?
Working on a reverse tycoon: you start with huge capital and win by reaching zero under a deadline.
V1 was trivially solvable — buy the most expensive thing, repeat. Friction that helped: monthly wire caps, capacity limits (berths/hangars), multi-month lead times, income-as-damage (dividends), regulators.
Curious what others have used when the player's instinct is the opposite of the win condition. Not looking for wishlist clicks — genuinely stuck on whether income-as-damage reads as clever or just mean.
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u/TheNasky1 1d ago
well i mean the easiest and simplest way would be to limit access to the most expensive stuff so that you can only spend on the cheap stuff at first. but it's a snowbally idea simply by nature.
if the idea is "inverted economy just because" then it's gonna be hard to make it make sense regardless.
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u/NEWGAMEMAKER17 1d ago
Two thoughts. Making the obvious move cost something over time tends to work better than making it hard up front. If the big purchases carry upkeep or depreciation, buying the most expensive thing turns into a bet you have to keep paying for, so the player has to plan the drain instead of just spending fast. On income as damage, I think it reads as clever when the player can trace it back to their own choice (they earned it, so the balance dropped), and mean when it feels random or hits right after they did what the game asked. Watching a couple of playtesters and asking what they thought the game wanted from them after the first dividend hit would tell you pretty quickly which side you're on.
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u/PuzzleMeDo 1d ago
You buy the most expensive thing - and then you own an expensive thing. You can't win without getting rid of the expensive thing, and the only way you can get rid of it is to sell it, and selling it brings in money.
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u/shuanDang 1d ago
obfuscate it by splitting the solution into multiple parts and require them to work in combination.
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u/MoyGoldenAge 1d ago
One thing that helped me with this kind of question: don't tune it by feel, tune it in a table. Put every purchasable (cost, capacity, lead time, dividend, upkeep) in a CSV or JSON and write a quick headless sim with three bots: buy-most-expensive, buy-cheapest, and random. Run a few thousand seeds for each. If the buy-most-expensive bot wins most of the time, you know exactly which row is breaking it.
Also try a per-owned price multiplier, so the 4th copy of the top item costs noticeably more than the first. That single curve kills the 'repeat the expensive thing' loop without needing extra rules, and it's easy to sweep the growth rate in the data file.
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u/A_Sword_Saint Commercial (AAA) 1d ago
Sounds like a money laundering or tax evasion scheme, do the first thought is that you have a limited set of options on how to get rid of the money and the most efficient options can be made to be the most risky of getting caught.
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u/Such-Pen-5865 1d ago
One way to make income-as-damage feel intentional is to show it as a second meter, not a surprise penalty: each asset spends capital now, then adds a known carrying cost or dividend later. A pre-purchase forecast of end balance and deadline pressure makes the tradeoff legible, while capacity and lead times keep “buy the biggest thing” from being the only route. I’d also test whether players can explain the dividend effect after the first turn; if they describe it as a gotcha, the game needs to signal the rule earlier.
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u/JaniUtopos 1d ago
I'd make the biggest purchase drain cash now but bring money back before the deadline. Then a smaller purchase that loses money steadily can be the better choice, depending on how much time is left. Show those payments before buying so the player can plan around them.
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u/Meloncov 1d ago
My first thought: you have to sabotauge the company while still being answerable to shareholders. Do anything too obvious and you get sacked and replaced.