Lemonade Startup – A satire simulator game | Hacker News Reader

Lemonade Startup – A satire simulator game

lemonstartup.com

57 pointskylnew33 comments

OP here, we developed this game over the weekend for Toronto Game Jam and I thought the Hacker News community would appreciate the subject matter. There's a total of 7 endings and one involves getting acquired by Juicebook. See if you can figure it out :D

A couple nitpicks. It's stressful to land on a page with a countdown to start and no idea how it works or what I need to do. I couldn't scroll down to the instructions or forecast. Other than that the interface is pretty slick. Good luck!

Thanks, yeah. I had limited time for browser sizing during the jam but it does respond if you size down your browser a little bit to fit 1024 X 675 approximately.

I think that's kind of the point...

I can't read the instructions either, and the keyboard shortcuts don't seem to work. Drag and drop is not efficient to continuous playing, so I quit...

The first two times I was able to "pay myself".

It's using Agile methodology. The problem is likely with you ;).

how the hell am i supposed to make money!?

I just keep bleeding cash no matter what I spend my time on

Focus on more sales.

The instructions were cut off for me. screen on my machine is only 13"

Only seen the "pushed out by board" ending. Getting up to $4M valuation on some runs.

My gut level guess of the underlaying mechanic is your most popular activity becomes your ending and focusing most on sales results in "pushed out by board"

Well, it mostly has to do with whether you are taking cash for equity and have the control to stay in power in that case.

11M valuation and pushed out by board too... picky bastards.

FWIW - I did a lemonade stand as a kid and charged $.05 per glass. We (brothers/friends) would keep a jar with about $.75 in change on top of the table.

Everyone felt bad for us and tipped us $.25-5 per glass - avg tip was $1. We could not have charged $1 - we tested the price elasticity of demand. But, they felt terrible we never had any money in our jar.

Just saying tips make a difference.

After about 10-15 plays, my last 3 games were:

Valuation: 312,057,919 Cash: 1,228,670 Ending: Still in Business

Valuation: 168,777,006 Cash: 949,141 Ending: Bootstrapped (was trying for this one)

Valuation: 788,748,152 Cash: 1,257,966 Ending: Still In Business (http://i.imgur.com/Js2ZOYx.png)

What I did was (roughly): Left the price at $1.5 nearly the whole time. I dropped it down to .50 in the last sprint.

First 5 days researching to get PMF.

Next 15 day designing to get Award

11 days on sales, accepting everything (all 3 carts, salmon, rappers, etc.) but not the investors. I wanted the extra marketing/sales from the other things, not the money. Equity be damned! (Damn that "second life" cart, it steals m'equity! As does the salmon one too. You need all the equities for the Fruitbook ending.)

Next 8 days on development to get the drops

Then the last 17 day on marketing, always accepting the PR/video/etc throughout the whole time.

It will largely depend on the weather that last day, but this routine should give you a good deal of valuation each time. On my $788M run, the last day was 29c "sunny with clouds"

Selling $0 lemonade at the end brings your final valuation up to crazy values. 200 million range.

That was too much fun for such a simple game! I just finished with 50k in the bank and a $15million valuation. If only life were so easy to game.

The secret to success and not bleed cash is business 101:

- Sales and Marketing all the way. Nothing else.

- Go to $10 from the beginning (you are starbucks of lemonade)

- Accept: free cash, PR, licenses, new locations

- Reject: Anything that gives away equity or royalties

260k in cash 15.9M valuation

http://cl.ly/image/2m1F161B1w2B

more business 101 - after showing initially good results and establishing confidence, drop your prices to unsustainable levels (i.e. $0) to drive growth and inflate your valuation, then make a swift exit. This strategy netted me ~$200k + $90m+ valuation.

pssssh I had $66k in cash and a $33 million valuation by basically randomly clicking and assigning things and never changing my price. Also accepting every popup offer that came along.

I have been acquired by JuiceBook after finishing with $116k in cash and a valuation of $8.6m.

It seems that the secret is to increase price throughout the game - hitting $10/cup by the 2nd half of Sprint 4. Also accept any and all popups.

The name reminds me of an old apple 2 game called lemonade stand which was a simulation of an, wait for it, lemonade stand. It had random weather...I remember hoping for a heat wave in Lemonsville California.

While not played on the apple 2. A form of that simulator on the web from younger years was an inspiration for this game.

Same, reminder of that game from long ago :)

Hot Dog Stand

I noticed that on one day my valuation can go from negative thousands to positive thousands and vice versa. So, what is better? Final cash or final valuation?

Start off designing furiously, get that Super Slick Packaging, and then switch to Sales/Marketing until the end.

Final Cash: $1,633,350.26

Final Valuation: $147,397,541.20

$190M in valuation after the second try. Trick is to focus on product dev and then once you reach PMF, just spend on S&M.

There's going to be a blog post about a blood orange lemonade stand selling for $10/glass on Monday.

Followed by a $2048 Flappy Bird stand.

Guess I ran it too lean. $30K cash left in the bank, $10MM valuation.... no acquisition :'-(

Finished with 19k in cash an 977k in valuation Fun game stressful when you first land though.

The day before the end I had a $19m valuation, then it dropped to $10m on the last day :(

Looking at the other comments on here.. maybe I should go into the lemonade business :P

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