Nine startups out of ten die in their first year. Nonsense!

If you have two juniors, ten dollars and a brilliant plan, you have everything you need. Well, almost everything...

Hire developers, ship releases and take on contract work so there's money for more releases. Every release brings hype. Whoever reaches 20 hype first wins.

The catch: everyone moves at once and in secret. You never know where your rivals will send their people but crowd always costs more.

How a day goes

• Planning. Everyone secretly sends their developers to four zones: Hire, Release, R&D and Outsource and may lay one trap.

• Reveal. Zones open one after another. A seat costs a dollar for every rival who got there before you.

• Actions. Hire a senior, ship “Blockchain Toaster”, dig up new cards in R&D or earn some money on someone else's project.

• Count. Reach 20 hype and lead everyone — you win. Otherwise it's back to work tomorrow.

What's inside

• 64 releases from “Wi-Fi Kettle” to “AGI in Two Weeks”, including six killer features, especially evil cards everyone gets once per game.

• 8 traps to lay for your rivals: the “All-Day Call” in Outsource leaves their people working for free.

• 24 trends that change the rules for everyone mid-game: an IPO raises the bar, a crypto winter makes releases cheaper.

• Developers with character: juniors, middles and seniors with traits like “Freelancer”, “Afraid of Prod” or “Cinder”, plus AI developers who work weekends but eat a dollar a day.

• Friday deploys are allowed. Every one of them leaves you a face-down incident that blows up on a random day next week. Prod may go down. Or you may get away with it.

Play your way

• Online with 2–6 players: open rooms or private ones with a code, and bots take the empty seats.

• Against bots of four levels, from the cautious Coward to Gil Bates, the boss who sees every card and cheats shamelessly.

• Hotseat for several people on one screen.

• Tutorial that walks you through your first two days.

A game takes about 20 in-game days, 10–15 minutes for session. 25 rare achievements.