Case 09
Local Capital | A town-building simulation game
I'm making a town-building simulation game on my own: you take a small town in San'in and grow it into a big city through mergers and promotions. The concept and game design are mine.
Visit the game's website↗localcapital.penguinvisual.jp
- Our role
- Concept, game design
- Delivered
- The game in development (current build)
Project background
As a kid playing Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires, I liked laying out my base and just looking at it more than fighting. When I looked for town-building games, the simple ones never gave me the joy of putting a town together, the realistic ones were too complicated to get into, and none of them had that 2.5D view. So I decided to make the game I wanted to play.
How we made it
A town-building game about Japanese local government. It is set in Yakumo, a fictional town by Lake Nakaumi on the border of Tottori and Shimane. As mayor, you draw zones, grow the farms, fishing port and small factories, merge with neighbouring towns and villages, and work towards becoming a city. The shape of the game, how it plays and the ideas behind it are mine. I brainstorm with Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic's AI), and Claude writes most of the code; gpt-image (OpenAI) draws the ground textures and the buildings. The view is 2.5D: detailed 2D artwork seen from an angle above.
What we delivered
The game in development (current build). Its website covers the game and the story behind it.