Permit me to lay the business out in full. It is an incremental game. Number go up.


An empire stands on three (3) legs, each bought and upgraded separately. Starve one and the other two sit idle:

• SCRAPE, for supply. A Dial-Up Harvester pulls three strangers a day out of the wire; a Census Siphon pulls rather more. They fill my hand until it is full, and a full hand leaves the machines idle.
  
• TYPE, for speed. The keyboard is a build, not a purchase: cartridges for quicker keys, longer life, even an autopilot. Hammer one key long enough and the cap comes off and stays off, until I pay to have it put back.
  
• HACK, for efficiency. Sixty four (64) nodes buy a bigger hand, more addresses on the CC line, fatter margins, and a surer way past the spam filter. Bought once, mine forever.

The business proceeds in five (5) steps, as follows:

CLAUSE THE FIRST. My machines print contacts while I sleep. They arrive in my hand as cards: a retiree, a crypto enthusiast, a clerk of banking.

CLAUSE THE SECOND. I drag one onto the letterhead. The rest ride the CC line, so one email reaches them all and every one of them pays me in full.

CLAUSE THE THIRD. I type the pitch, and every keystroke knocks a keycap loose. They tumble down the page into a heap: coins, gold, heat, a rare diamond, a bomb I would rather not touch, and a great deal of garbage that turns out to be a plunger. None of it can be lifted while I am still typing.

CLAUSE THE FOURTH. I press SEND and the gauge runs on monitor two. My typing decides how wide the good bands are; the mark decides how much of them I am allowed to reach. Then I press LOCK. There is no undo key in this world or any other.

CLAUSE THE FIFTH. The page comes back and I have six (6) seconds to strip it bare. The mark decides how: SWEEP runs the cursor over it, CHISEL cracks each icon open, DOZER herds the heap into the far edge, PINBALL takes everything it strikes, LASER burns it from above.

One bad address reports me and the whole email burns, however well the others believed. At five (5) stars the police come, and I have forty five (45) seconds to move my money somewhere a raid cannot reach before the courts take sixty percent (60%). The heat, dearest friend, is non-refundable.




My clock is a button. It sits on the Start menu, it reads End Day, and my contacts, my heat, my debts and the market all wait politely until I press it. Nothing runs while I am away from the desk.

Every contact card I did not use is destroyed when the day ends. And every few days the crown collects its share of everything I have been making, a share that grows each time I pay it. I do not recommend missing one. My uncle collects either way.

The crown requires $400, nephew. You have 3 days to find it.


An icon on my desktop reads Grand Theft Email, which is as much subtlety as anyone here manages. I double-click it, the camera pulls me down into the monitor, and I am on the street in a top down pixel world: the same coast I have been staring past all game. A beach village, a paved city west, a volcano east that stays shut until I am somebody. The bank takes deposits a raid cannot touch. The chief of police hates this one trick.



Friend, my desktop is crowded, and it includes:

• CONTACTS. A binder of marks, organized as collectible cards, of rarities COLD through LEGENDARY.
  
• THE LAGOS STOCK EXCHANGE. Stonks. Nine (9) market phases, none of them your friend.
  
• WANTED.EXE. Installs itself. Cannot be uninstalled by crying.
  
• CROWNCHAT. His Majesty King Adebayo (my uncle, and my ultimatum), my cousin James (a coward), and Dr. Crypto (a doctor, allegedly).

All of it built like a machine from 1998 that somebody still loves: a BIOS that posts, a recycle bin that has decided my files are evidence, and a duck who means well. It is not much, but it's dishonest work.


ONE (1) STEAM WISHLIST. $0.00 USD. Payable immediately, by the button above.

Act now. This offer expires when I do.

Yours in God,
His Most Royal Highness FAKE PRINCE

Fake Prince Simulator is a satire. Single-player, keyboard and mouse. No actual marks were contacted in the making of it. No pedestrians were harmed, yet. Please do not wire money to princes, fake or otherwise.