Money Makes Money

This is a very enjoyable litle life sim that focuses on giving the player some innsight into how investment and economy works. It does what it intends very well and has given me a good 17 hours of entertainment at this point. It takes some trial and error to figure out good strategies and how the different game mechanics work, so i would say this may not be for you if you are impatient or dont enjoy a challenge.

This is a great game for demonstrating a lifetime of finance and money skills; and how time works to compound returns. Over the last three years I have owned it, I have come back to it regularly every six months for a few more scenarios, and games, to test, and to remind myself of what I had learned before. Yes, I have only 55 hours logged so far, but a game can be run in about an hour and a half, maybe faster. For the time involved this is a Class A coach; so much so that I have bought more than ten of my steam friends copies of the game since I first became aware of what it offers. Im a full time stock trader myself, 50+ years of age, with a paid for house and a history in business, but my friends list ranges from 16 years old to 60. Literally anyone can get something out of this one :D

Best score so far is $13 billion at death.

Bit confusing at first but now I know what to do.

I never recommend you to buy this game basically. Because the pattern of game is same. And, the debt arises automatically when you start the game.
Investment has various risk surely, but please not to be arisen the debt automatically.

It's a nice game.

Don't take it as a perfect simulator: it's far from it.
I don't like that the only way for you to control your expenses is to spend years and years studying how to save.
I didn't pay 4000$ for an auto insurance as soon as I turned 18, for example. I'd like to choose wether I want to get married, to have children, or to divorce. Oh my, the divorce event is the worst in the whole game.
Why do I have to upgrade a category to its end to see what's best to invest in? That's all lost time.

If you want to break the game, it's as easy as getting a professional job (alright, that's realistic, but you get old in the meantime).
Or just get an unskilled job, while you mine crypto (with the same hardware for decades, that never breaks down, and that's always up to the task), and use Penny stocks or any commodity. Yes, because both will give you an average 23/27% return year over year, making the whole game very repetitive at that point.
Come on, everybody knows that you can't earn so easily from Penny stocks, even if you spend 90 months of your life studying them.

There are a few bugs: if you edit the music/effects volume changes, and then you go to the menu, they go back to default; if you go to the menu, the game window resizes itself, every single time; there is no fullscreen.

But, honestly, there isn't much more on Steam for people who enjoy finance game, and it's fun and easy to play.
I think its price is perfectly reasonable.
Overall, I'm glad I bought it.

(EDITED)
After the discussion with the dev I decided to change my review to a positive one.
Some players (including me) feel that the game should be more balanced regarding to the cost of living. So I re-configured the cost of living (more discount) from the config menu and now I feel that the game is more playable.

That is my humble opinion guys and dear dev.
I am enjoying it more now...

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(Old review)
I am 30 years old, I earn 120,000$ per year through my job and I still have to borrow money every year (which is an ongoing circle of rising debt), and all of these because for some reason, the dev decided, that I am a financial moron and spend more, than I can afford...

Real people in real life, you know, choose in which house they should live and how much to spend on social life, transport etc

This is a part of the concept of "financial intelligence"... To create a balance sheet surplus.

Totally unrealistic game and the dev, needs to change that.
I tried 4 different new games, with the same job and still the same scenario...
Can't create a money surplus, because of the silly expenses (which you can't choose)

* I will not play the game again, but I am not requesting a refund, because I respect the time and the knowledge put by the dev. It could be an excellent educational tool for investments. No doubt about that.

O jogo é bom... em relação ao valor cobrado pelo mesmo.

A jogabilidade não é exatamente clara, mas fuçando um pouco consegui entender o que precisava fazer. O jgoo oferece várias formas de "suceder" na vida, entretanto, são semelhares, e em alguns casos, sem pontos negativos em um investimento, apenas positivo. (Ex: Investimento Stock Exchange > Income, é só aprimorar e vc fica rico fácil fácil).

Tirando esse fator, falta no jogo algum esquema do estilo Bit Life, onde você consegue deixar um herdeiro para continuar a saga. O maior patrimonio que eu consegui fechar foi 115mi, mas queria ter ido além. Só que ficar recomeçando do zero é meio chato.

Considerando o valor cobrado e as funcionalidades oferecidas, justo. Nada mais, nada menos do que esperado.

An interesting turn-based resource management sim. The concept is simple enough. Game of Life, make it to the end as successfully as possible, make sure you've got enough money to pay your taxes. Only issue is when you figure out the right path - School, university, Professional career track then Put everything into office based real estate, you should end up with about half a billion by the end of it, it loses a lot of playability. Still a good couple of hours fun for the price.

Nice game, I like it and had a huge interest after reading "rich dad poor dad".

@Dev/Stephen , could you improve the new setting options and make it more general? Ie. I would like to increase difficulty by let say 50% in 2 clicks rather than going to all different options (and there are a lot :) )

Really wanted this to be a good game, but some really dumb choices from the developer. Just no control over your expenditure, within one or two years expenditure shoots above your ability to earn, can never seem to catch up. Even for $3 I feel ripped off. Spend some time balancing the game please.

you need to balance the game more, i have more more on expenditure than income. I love the game but some sort of life control would have ben nice.

Eh, I spent $3 on this game so I'm not that upset but it's pretty shallow and unbalanced. For some reason, as a 16 year old kid I'm allowed to take out $150k in real estate loans, which if you put into commercial real estate can quickly earn you an average growth of 36% with a 6% income. Once you lower insurance costs and income tax not even the worst economic conditions can touch you. Played the game for like 3 hours and hit over a quadrillion dollars, and that wasn't even fully maxing everything.

It's not a completely terrible game but the dev doesn't seem to be interested in fixing things and you'll get tired of it really quickly.

Garbage. Unrealistic expenses increasing with income. Unrealistic random events makes it nearly impossible to develop any kind of strategy. Great idea on building a game to teach people about economics and the different forms of investing but horrible execution. Needs a lot of work.

Would be good if the devs would actually work on updates ik its a money grab as steam does not give a dam about game quality anymore but still have QA people . A lot of choices that are made by the devs ( he thinks you have to do this and that ) and that you have no options for. I know he wants to make it real .. but real is not why we buy games .. needs MORE options and taxes are just crazy. But I do love the main goal of this game. also UI is crap...
But it is worth the price .. .

As someone who studied finance I was hoping to enjoy this game but it is just ridiculously unrealistic and has way too much randomization built into it.

There seems to be absolutely no control over random events and how you live your life. I randomly was married with a child and divorced by age 23 without any choice in the matter. Additionally there are random requirements for doing certain things that don't make sense. There were times that I could easily afford the costs of education out of pocket but was still forced to invest time into learning about student borrowing before furthering my education. What is the point in that if I'm not borrowing money.

Another issue that I came across was the investment in real estate rental properties which not only consistently lost value over the span of 30-40 years (seriously?) but did not seem to contribute any rental income whatsoever.

The biggest issue though is the expenditure scaling. By the time I was in my mid to late 70's I had hundreds of millions of dollars in investments and decided to try to hit a billion before age 90 when the game apparently ends. I was earning hundreds of millions in "medical benefits" per year, tens of millions in interest on bonds (30% interest, year after year, seriously?) and had about half a billion in crypto currency investments. You would think that I was set up for a life of luxury in my twilight years, you'd be wrong.

By the mid 80's my expenditures were approaching a billion dollars a year with no way to control them. I have no idea what they were scaling off because even as I sold of massive amounts of my investments trying to fund the ridiculous "elderly care" bills the costs just kept spiraling upwards. By the time I hit about 85 I was unable to pay my bills and was bankrupt. This is absolute foolishness.

You MIGHT enjoy messing around with this game a bit and to be honest I did get some enjoyment out of it but I absolutely cannot recommend this game. Do not think you are going to learn anything serious about life and financial matters from this that will carry over into the real world. This is not at all how personal finances work.

Okay its odd two out two it ends same way...-income when you reach adulthood.
Somehow I think all that you do in this game you can't do in real life most of stuff.

I found stock riding hard and finally know what you can and can't do some stuff is bogus.

When I was young person you couldn't do that is feeling I got, I mean there are no, wait until your older. When your young kid you could had your own start up like lemonade stand and gain some sort income...or Baker's stand now that outlawed I think some towns. Unless your part of scout legion or non-profit.

Paper delivery would been possible teenager job, volunteer work but this game doesn't have anything of sort. volunteer work looks good on your record for college.

The game very how you clicker, and there sound attached to it but You wish it was bit more. Like had imagery and avatar of your character...seems go to quickly by...is there way make go by only six months? one year seem to blur quickly.

Neat game for the price. Never broke through 100 billion though, high score at 80.

A good game, but the inability to control your lifestyle and expenditure is a problem.

This little game is an important educational (and entertaining) gem. It is simple but sophisticated and realistic. The goal is to go through life (from age of 10 to 90) without becoming bankrupt. It is realistic because it takes into account all relevant macroeconomic factors, such as government stance, tax levels, benefit system, income levels for different job types, and relevant pension provisions. It is also realistic by making time, not just money, a very important factor. We invest time, not just money, in everything we try to achieve, and the game neatly captures that.

Overall, I enjoyed playing it multiple times, and I've also learned a few things from experimenting with different career tracks and investment options. It really made me reflect on my own life choices. I just wish this game existed when I was 10! I might've made different financial, career and educational choices..

Pros
- a neat interface; investing time and what that means for game outcomes takes a bit of learning, but makes sense;
- all parameters are realistic (taxes, interest rates, salary levels, costs); most time investments are also realistic;
- the available time to invest drops after a certain age, which is also realistic (since we get less energy as we age);
- the variety of jobs and investment instruments available, as well as changes to macroeconomic factors, means the game can be replayed many times under new scenarios;

Cons:
- paying taxes is manual, which is not necessarily true in life for employees; it also becomes annoying and would benefit from an automated payment function; it is also not necessarily true that we first buy clothes and then pay taxes, so order of deductions is important I think;
- level of expenditure such as living costs cannot be controlled (apart from some discounts, which are very time-expensive); I think in real life we are more in control of how much we spend, and how that expenditure increases over time;
- having children seems more like a life event than something we have any control of; perhaps that should be a measure of education? the age at which people have children can also be different based on level of education;
- after a certain level of wealth, the game becomes quite repetitive - what else than pay taxes, buy some expensive experience and luxuries and reinvest? It becomes quite sad actually..

For the price, it's a fun little time sink.

One problem I've found is that maxing out an investment at 2147M will cause that investment to lock and go into the negative, making it impossible to use that money, as well as count against your net worth.