> Every rule, vote count and case in this game is drawn from the public record. Sources are in docs/research/ in the project folder. Neighborhood politics scores and the economics are simplified for play.
Nice, I'm happy to hear that, Claude. This kind of silly game is supposed to help you understand a complex issue in a fun way. But this is missing the plot entirely. Why is this so overwhelmingly complex? Why would I spend time learning this ugly, convoluted and verbose UI? Who is this for??
These people should, instead of posting the game, just post a video of them playing through the game, as most people have no interest in playing other’s slop but may just be curious to watch someone play and provide comedic value.
[−]JumpCrisscross · 2026-10-11 Sun 00:31 UTC ·
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...I enjoyed playing it. It's silly. But it's in a similar category as "Papers, Please." It's not like it's stressful, there is just a bunch of random diabolus ex nihilo crap flying at you, which isn't particularly unusual in a game.
There's no reason a "housing crisis" game couldn't have been done like that, with simple choices and immediate reactions. A game that respects the player's time, is easy to pick up and makes the point effectively.
Any simplification hides real problems and takes away from the point. Even your desire for simple choices and immediate reactions elides the fact that not every policy decision has visible short term effects. Some are only visibly beneficial or harmful in the long run, and may not end up that way depending on other decisions.
That game is more of an idle / clicker game, and while I quite enjoyed the one from a few months ago about being a SWE in SF, the shtick wears thin quickly especially if you’re not in the niche that identifies with all the in-jokes.
If the thesis of the game is that there's too much paperwork and regulatory burden, a simpler game would have to just tell the player "there's too much paperwork". This game--whether you liked it or not--is a lot more effective by showing you. You are the (simplified) bureaucrat, not a choose-your-own-adventure player being told that the bureaucracy is dense.
I really do think that complexity and UI obtuseness was implemented as commentary, not as a mistake.
[−]howunfortunate · 2026-10-10 Sat 22:16 UTC ·
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It's a throwaway joke about NIMBYism, not a triple-A blockbuster production.
You've completely missed what my comment was trying to convey. If it's throwaway, why is it so damn complex to play? I've seen AAA games with less features.
[−]howunfortunate · 2026-10-10 Sat 22:24 UTC ·
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It's easier to make a complex UI than a simple one!
For equal feature sets, sure. But what I'm saying, and what you also missed, is that this game should have never been this complex in the first place. This complexity is doing a huge disservice to the message it's trying to convey.
I honestly don’t see what you’re going on about. If this was made five years ago we would have standing ovations. It’s the AI, right? I think it is great. It was fun to play. Your phd game example is boring as hell.
I actually was surprised I liked this convoluted bureaucracy. Reality is fighting you all the way, love it. Normal games are too straightforward. That said I assume it was just a toy project.
I don’t think any of these people arguing with you are trying to understand or learn.
[−]JumpCrisscross · 2026-10-11 Sun 08:08 UTC ·
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> what I'm saying, and what you also missed, is that this game should have never been this complex in the first place
I respectfully disagree. I played it twice. Once, I lost. That cued me into looking at a few more datapoints the second time around, when I made it through.
I never wound up looking at everything. I didn’t need to. That said, I could probably improve my score if I did.
You can play most games to completion while ignoring the complexity. If you want to dive deeper, however, that complexity is fun. I certainly appreciated uncovering little details around how the various metrics played together, and how, in turn, that affected how I should play.
Eh, your example is a different kind of game. Not into linear choose-your-own-adventure games myself. I think the UI of this one accurately models the many moving parts and forces in the process it's simulating, and I didn't have a problem picking it up though I skipped the tutorial. It has a sense of humor (read the speaker comments at meetings, and the news articles), and hits you with the real world outcome each development is based on. Made an impact on me.
This runs into the reality that the game maker knows who his target audience is, but you don't. If he wants to make a spreadsheet simulator or something targeted at people who like complex interfaces he can do that. I point at ASCII-UI Dwarf Fortress, one of the great games of this century, as evidence that a game does not need to be accessible to be true art.
It is frustrating to be excluded when a game developer builds a game that looks interesting but targets a niche you don't fit in.
Also those https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html style games are a bit vapid. At any moment a person has more than a handful of choices and the simplification abstracts away the important ones, like ranking what ideas are important or changing strategies for idea generation in this one.
I agree, but please try to engage with what I'm saying. Both the PhD game and TFA are made with the goal of teaching an issue to a broader audience. Do you think TFA is an effective tool of communication? Don't you think its messaging could have been better conveyed had it been designed with more intent, less focused on piling on feature after feature for a game that isn't designed to be replayed more than once?
Both TFA and the PhD game should be considered "educational", people won't come back to those again and again because of how fun they are. They're designed to appear in HN feed, be played once, learn maybe a thing or two in an amusing way, and never be opened again. Do you understand now why I find this complexity so counter-productive? It's fine for a game to be complex, if it's designed for players that will sink hundreds of hours into them. It's not fine for a silly project to demand the same learning effort from its players.
> This runs into the reality that the game maker knows who his target audience is, but you don't.
Have you considered that TFA was vibe-coded, and maybe the "game maker" hasn't put much thought into who his target audience could be, like, at all, and just asked Claude to make a game about NIMBYism?
> Both the PhD game and TFA are made with the goal of teaching an issue to a broader audience.
I mean, are? It looks like it might be trying to create a San Francisco housing simulator. Simulators aren't necessarily tools of education. That's why I picked DF as a comparison - it is a Moria siumulator, but it isn't supposed to educate its players on the nature of Tolkien. It is more about exploring a complex environment.
And the PhD game doesn't look like it is going to teach anyone anything. It reads to me like some guy blowing off steam without having much of substance to say. Which is also fine, it just isn't much of an educational journey.
You're implicitly assuming that you have determined the target audience and goal of the game. And while you might be accurate, you might also be inaccurate. There is a decent chance that the target audience is people who look at this and think "ooh, cool". It is great fun to criticise games but claiming that a game is in the wrong genre altogether is just a bit much for me today. If you don't like this genre that is cool, but the game maker might just be doing his own thing and having fun.
> Have you considered that TFA was vibe-coded, and maybe the "game maker" hasn't put much thought into who his target audience could be, like, at all, and just asked Claude to make a game about NIMBYism?
His target audience could be himself, in which case he's probably got a deep understanding of who they are and whether they enjoy the game.
[−]JumpCrisscross · 2026-10-11 Sun 01:34 UTC ·
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> the PhD game and TFA are made with the goal of teaching
The PhD game came across as a blog post masquerading as a game. The city-building one was fun even if you ignore the lessons it's teaching. (You don't have to read the news articles. They're cleverly written, however, and so sort of fun to.)
Well, you should seek a better tell because I've played ASCII Dwarf Fortress quite a bit. Re-read my comments, I only have an issue with TFA's complexity, in the context of it being a throwaway educational game. It shouldn't require as much involvement from the player as it currently does. And certainly, it shouldn't even occur to people to compare it to Dwarf Fortress, which happened twice already.
> Every rule, vote count and case in this game is drawn from the public record. Sources are in docs/research/ in the project folder. Neighborhood politics scores and the economics are simplified for play.
Nice, I'm happy to hear that, Claude. This kind of silly game is supposed to help you understand a complex issue in a fun way. But this is missing the plot entirely. Why is this so overwhelmingly complex? Why would I spend time learning this ugly, convoluted and verbose UI? Who is this for??
EDIT: I'll link to an example of what I think this game should have been: https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html
A game made with intent, that is easy to pick up, respects its player's time, and makes its point effectively.
Like most vibe coded projects, it is for the person who created it. And usually only them.
There's no reason a "housing crisis" game couldn't have been done like that, with simple choices and immediate reactions. A game that respects the player's time, is easy to pick up and makes the point effectively.
I really do think that complexity and UI obtuseness was implemented as commentary, not as a mistake.
I honestly don’t see what you’re going on about. If this was made five years ago we would have standing ovations. It’s the AI, right? I think it is great. It was fun to play. Your phd game example is boring as hell.
I actually was surprised I liked this convoluted bureaucracy. Reality is fighting you all the way, love it. Normal games are too straightforward. That said I assume it was just a toy project.
I respectfully disagree. I played it twice. Once, I lost. That cued me into looking at a few more datapoints the second time around, when I made it through.
I never wound up looking at everything. I didn’t need to. That said, I could probably improve my score if I did.
You can play most games to completion while ignoring the complexity. If you want to dive deeper, however, that complexity is fun. I certainly appreciated uncovering little details around how the various metrics played together, and how, in turn, that affected how I should play.
It is frustrating to be excluded when a game developer builds a game that looks interesting but targets a niche you don't fit in.
Also those https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html style games are a bit vapid. At any moment a person has more than a handful of choices and the simplification abstracts away the important ones, like ranking what ideas are important or changing strategies for idea generation in this one.
> Also those https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/index.html style games are a bit vapid.
I agree, but please try to engage with what I'm saying. Both the PhD game and TFA are made with the goal of teaching an issue to a broader audience. Do you think TFA is an effective tool of communication? Don't you think its messaging could have been better conveyed had it been designed with more intent, less focused on piling on feature after feature for a game that isn't designed to be replayed more than once?
Both TFA and the PhD game should be considered "educational", people won't come back to those again and again because of how fun they are. They're designed to appear in HN feed, be played once, learn maybe a thing or two in an amusing way, and never be opened again. Do you understand now why I find this complexity so counter-productive? It's fine for a game to be complex, if it's designed for players that will sink hundreds of hours into them. It's not fine for a silly project to demand the same learning effort from its players.
> This runs into the reality that the game maker knows who his target audience is, but you don't.
Have you considered that TFA was vibe-coded, and maybe the "game maker" hasn't put much thought into who his target audience could be, like, at all, and just asked Claude to make a game about NIMBYism?
I mean, are? It looks like it might be trying to create a San Francisco housing simulator. Simulators aren't necessarily tools of education. That's why I picked DF as a comparison - it is a Moria siumulator, but it isn't supposed to educate its players on the nature of Tolkien. It is more about exploring a complex environment.
And the PhD game doesn't look like it is going to teach anyone anything. It reads to me like some guy blowing off steam without having much of substance to say. Which is also fine, it just isn't much of an educational journey.
You're implicitly assuming that you have determined the target audience and goal of the game. And while you might be accurate, you might also be inaccurate. There is a decent chance that the target audience is people who look at this and think "ooh, cool". It is great fun to criticise games but claiming that a game is in the wrong genre altogether is just a bit much for me today. If you don't like this genre that is cool, but the game maker might just be doing his own thing and having fun.
> Have you considered that TFA was vibe-coded, and maybe the "game maker" hasn't put much thought into who his target audience could be, like, at all, and just asked Claude to make a game about NIMBYism?
His target audience could be himself, in which case he's probably got a deep understanding of who they are and whether they enjoy the game.
The PhD game came across as a blog post masquerading as a game. The city-building one was fun even if you ignore the lessons it's teaching. (You don't have to read the news articles. They're cleverly written, however, and so sort of fun to.)
Tell me you never played the old TUI dwarf fortress without telling me.
My guess is that's the point - now you understand how San Francisco property developers feel.