Build Your Empire

Start with a lemonade stand. End with a space corporation. Business Empire is an idle tycoon that grows with you across ten tiers of progression, each unlocking new mechanics and challenges.

Your businesses need employees, inventory, and space to operate. Hire workers to boost efficiency, but watch the payroll. Stock inventory before it runs out, or watch your income dry up. Rent commercial properties or face space penalties that eat into your margins. Random events will test your resilience: fires, theft, lawsuits, product recalls, and employee drama all chip away at poorly-managed empires. Insurance exists for a reason.

Developed by a solo-developer, this game is going more for realism than anything else. As an economic game enjoy-er, I have always wanted to make stocks FEEL good to trade, and I think I have come up with a system that is satisfying and allows for various play styles! Take a look at all the cool features:

Businesses

• 55 unique business types across 10 tiers, ranging from Lemonade Stands to Space Corporations

• Buy, sell, and upgrade franchises of each type

• Stock inventory items and watch them decay over time if not sold

• Hire employees across multiple skill tiers to boost efficiency

• Hire managers to automate income collection, restocking, rebuilding, and insurance

• Set restock thresholds so managers buy inventory at the right time

• Toggle manager behaviors (auto-hire staff, auto-rebuild after disasters, auto-insure)

• Use Hiring Blitz to spend a day's income for massively accelerated hiring for a month

• Buy insurance to protect against disasters (fires, floods, etc.)

• Rebuild destroyed businesses

• Manually collect income for a 10% bonus when no manager is assigned

• Efficiency scales based on staffing levels and available space

  

Tier Progression

• 10 tiers of businesses, each requiring a certain number of franchises from the previous tier to unlock

• Higher tiers also require hitting company market cap milestones.

• Unlocking tiers grants access to new game systems (stocks, loans, options, company creation, real estate, etc.)

Stock Market

• 200 stocks across 15 industries

• 15 industry ETFs for diversified investing

• Buy and sell stocks with realistic price impact (AMM-style)

• Options trading — calls and puts with full Greeks display (Delta, Gamma, Theta, Vega, Rho, Implied Volatility)

• Earn dividends from stocks and ETFs

• Random market events — industry-wide disruptions, company scandals, earnings beats, trend shifts, volatility spikes

  

Company & CEO

• Go public by creating your own company from your business portfolio

• Add business types as divisions to your company

• Set dividend payout ratios from net income

• CEO Actions:

  • Manage company reserves (deposit/withdraw)

  • Capital moves: stock buybacks, special dividends, share offerings, debt issuance, stock splits

  • Operations: marketing campaigns, efficiency programs, restructuring, layoffs

  • Growth: acquisitions, adding new divisions, vertical integration, divestment

  • Corporate portfolio: buy and sell other stocks using company funds

  • Bid on government contracts

  • Set corporate policies: accounting methods, depreciation, tax strategy, capital allocation, investor relations, working capital, debt covenants, earnings guidance

  • Insider trading: buy or sell founder shares

Banking

• Savings accounts with interest tied to the Fed rate

• Loans to borrow up to 20% of your net worth with 12-month terms

• Credit score system (300–850) influenced by net worth, loan history, savings, and debt

• Automatic emergency loans when your cash goes negative (high interest penalty)

• Random banking events: loan freezes, savings bonuses, market crashes

  

Central Bank / Federal Reserve

• Dynamic Fed interest rate that affects all loan and savings rates

• Bi-monthly FOMC meetings with rate change decisions

• Economic indicators: inflation, unemployment, GDP, consumer confidence

• Rate changes ripple through the stock market

Real Estate

• 100+ property types across residential, commercial, industrial, office, mixed-use, and special categories

• 20+ zoning codes determining what businesses can operate where

• Rent properties to house your businesses (pre-Tier 5)

• Buy and sell properties outright and earn rental income (Tier 5+)

• Each business requires specific square footage and compatible zoning

• Income scales with how much space you have leased or owned

• Location scores affect property value and rent

• Property Finder tool to search by zoning, square footage, and location

  

Research Tree

• ~530 research nodes across 10 branches: Business, Trading, Real Estate, Banking, Risk, Tax, Automation, Market Intel, Mastery, and Research Lab

• Spend Research Points (earned from business income) to unlock upgrades

• Bonuses include: income boosts, cost reductions, efficiency gains, tax advantages, insurance discounts, and more

• Repeatable mastery nodes for infinite scaling

Random Events

• Negative: employees quit, workplace injuries occur, inventory theft happens, among various other events

• Positive: community support, free publicity, financial windfall, you get the drift

Casino

• Play Blackjack solo or with other players

• Adjustable bet sizes with min/max limits

• More to come later based on user input.

Taxes & Financials

• Monthly ledger tracking all income, expenses, and deductions

• Yearly taxes with progressive income tax and capital gains tax

• Capital loss carry-forward, losses offset future gains

• Full transaction categorization: business income, wages, inventory costs, lease payments, loan interest, etc.

• Balance Sheet view for a snapshot of your financial position

Multiplayer

• Online lobbies with player list and chat

• Up to 16 players, state is minimal, synchronization happens at the tick level.

• Lagless experience, simulated locally with minimal communication between players.

• Experience the EXACT same stock movements and impacts + trade against each other.

• Compete to see who can get the highest net worth!

UI & Quality of Life

• Windows-style desktop interface with draggable, resizable windows

• Taskbar showing current money, date, income per hour, portfolio value, and open windows

• Pause and resume the game at any time

• Save and load games (import/export save files)

• Event log showing recent happenings

• Statistics window tracking your progress

• Dashboard overview of your empire

• Tutorial system for new players

• Settings (mute audio, etc.)

Time & Progression

• Time flows in hours, days, weeks, months, and years all matter

• Daily operations, weekly listing refreshes, monthly ledger reports, yearly tax filings

• Income, events, market movements, and all systems run on the in-game clock