A city-building game where the city would rather you didn't build
A city-building game in which the city would prefer you didn't
Discretionary Review is a browser game set in San Francisco's City Hall in January 2015. You play as a developer trying to build housing while navigating a 6-5 moderate Board of Supervisors, a Planning Commission, and a thicket of laws like the Density Bonus, SB 35, SB 423, and CEQA. The game tracks your projects, hearings, investor reviews, and standing—which falls when you fight and rises when you compromise.
Standing rises when you finish homes, make concessions and show up. It falls when you fight. Below 30, people march.
- peri-cl
Reminds me of that Factorio joke mod which adds bureaucracy-processing as a recipe tree. Assemblers start to shut down if you don't process paperwork fast enough. IIRC, it had biters following the player around in queues to give them complaint forms.
- CalRobert
Of course, there’s also Car Park Capital, a game for what the city actually wants
- MisterMunchkin
We need one for HS2 where every time you try and build a small section of track, they demand a bat tunnel or a newt ramp or a fox power plant.
- AlbinoDrought
The best I got:
Discretionary Review (Developer): I built 4,147 homes in San Francisco, 2015 to 2031. Grade A, "Builder of Some Things". Survived all eight investor reviews. 16 hearings, 3 appeals, 4 lawsuits. The city needed 82,069.
- dependsontheq
Want to share the Code?
I would adapt it to the German situation and add to it - the first YIMBY Simulation
- JumpCrisscross
My suspicion is San Francisco would love a Beijing-style hukou system. That lets it lock housing (and thus the built character of the city) and control immigration which in turn should result in stable housing prices provided units don't go out of use or residents don't have too many children.
- minimaxa
Love the idea!
I started something similar as a meme game, but I'm just too busy to keep working on it: Data centre slumlord - https://binary-mirror.itch.io/data-centre-slumlord
- mrhyyyyde
Whoever made this, I love you and we should be friends.