Inside Social Games

Day in and day out, most of us work for someone else. But just what would it be like to be your own boss? To be the one that is in charge? Well, the folks over at Challenge Games have made that possibility a reality (sort of) with its newest game Ponzi Inc. This satirical tycoon-style game has players hiring quirky employees, upgrading offices, and completing jobs as they try to get ahead in a virtual business world.

It’s been quite a long time since we heard from Challenge Games. The last game we looked at was Nobility back in November of last year. That game’s design was well-done and so is the new one — to some effect, as AppData is showing that Ponzi already has than 26,000 monthly active users.

When starting out, there isn’t much of a tutorial other than asking you for the name of your business. From here on out, everything you need to do is presented in the form of your business “Agenda” (a quest log, of sorts), granting rewards for each completed item (rewards include cash as well as extra benefits called “Perks” that grant bonuses such as faster job completion).

Obviously, any budding business first requires employees, and so that’s your first task. Players are able to hire their friends as well as generic workers, each of which have their own curious, and cliché, personality traits (like the one person at work who is obsessed with Facebook… wait… ). Anyways, workers are needed to complete jobs in Ponzi, which is one of the primary elements of the game. The more workers one has, the more jobs can be done, and as expected, more money can be earned.

This really puts Ponzi into a sort of RPG category, as each job earns a fairly small amount of income but take sa period of time to complete. The lengthier the job, the more money is earned. The key difference, however, between this title and, say, a mafia-style RPG, is the satirical visual presentation.

Visuals are perhaps the greatest draw for this game. Everything in this game pokes fun at big corporations; be it the Dilbert-like characters, the backgrounds wrought with odd animations (such as “Godzilla” traipsing through the city), or the dialog used to explain a job. For example, a personal favorite is an early one called “Update Passwords” that says: “New passwords must have twelve consonants, numbers in the third and eight characters, and at least one comma.” For anyone that hasn’t worked in a corporate setting… yes, it is about that obnoxious.

As players complete jobs and earn rewards from agenda items, they are able to start building up their office. At the start, players begin with the basics of the basics, working out of the garage with a 1980s computer and a flea market desk. However, the more they play, the more they can upgrade that office and all of its content. To this end, the game is “almost” a virtual space type of app, but since players are not allowed to rearrange what they purchase and upgrade, there isn’t any real creativity. Nonetheless, there is some satisfaction in watching your business grow and evolve.

Quite frankly, there isn’t a whole lot to complain about. Other than a few usability issues, such as not being able to go back to your office from the Perks menu (you have to go to another menu and close that one to return), the game is rather amusing. If you are a fan of this type of game, or satirical, Dilbert-like humor, you will probably enjoy it. Who’d have thought that corporate life would make for such an interesting concept, right? Then again, one wouldn’t think city planning (SimCity) would be much fun either, now would they?