Stick Life: The Daily Grind

One life and twenty-five dollars

You start in a tent with $25 in your pocket. Every day in the city lasts 24 real minutes, from six in the morning round to the next, and the clock stops when you alt-tab. Shops keep hours, rent comes due, and fifty people go about their own day whether you show up or not. There's no script. Get a job, go back to school, sell fake watches, adopt a dog, or blow the lot at the blackjack table.

Nothing ends your run. If your health runs out you wake up in the hospital with a bill. Miss rent and you get five days before the eviction. You can lose money, never the save.

Work your way up

• BusinessCorp is the big ladder. You apply, sit a real interview, work one shift a day and ask your manager for the next promotion. At the top are four C-suite jobs, the CEO's chair, and finally the company itself. Buy it and it pays you every night.
  
• Construction Co., the restaurant kitchens and the warehouse dock are ladders of their own. Hold as many jobs as you like, one shift a day each.
  
• Once your shift is in there's usually overtime across town at time and a half, like fixing somebody's frozen computer.
  
• College, university and the trade school teach what the next promotion asks for. At home you can study at the desk, lift on the bench or hit the bag, and at the gym you time every rep yourself.

Get famous

Stadium West has five venues, and any of them will give you a night's work. Every gig is played by you, not rolled, and the better you are at the skill it runs on, the more it pays:

• Headline a rock show, a five-lane rhythm game on real recorded tracks.
  
• Do stand-up at the Velvet Riff. Land the punchlines on time and shut the hecklers down.
  
• Take penalties on game night at the Crucible.
  
• Train an AI model at Cortex.
  
• Fight for the title belt.

Fifty people who remember you

Everybody in town has a name, a job, a home, a schedule and friends of their own, and a few of them are already dating each other. Talk to people and they warm up to you, or they don't. They notice things. You picked a fight with them last week. You've got a new car. You got a face tattoo. You've worked five days straight and look it. Make friends, ask somebody out, go on dates, move in, get married. Or make a rival.

Some locals run something on the street. Beth and Vernon will play you at chess. Crispy deals three-card monte and cheats people he doesn't know. Buster sells seats for tonight's fight.

The other way to make money

Kody keeps counterfeit watches in his coat on Main Street. Buy a batch and sell them to people you talk to. The shady ones buy. The honest ones say no, and every no adds heat. Past 50 heat the police start coming for you, and they run faster than you walk. Reach your own front door and they'll leave you alone until tomorrow. Get caught and they take 5% of everything you're worth, plus what you were carrying. A knife or a gun from the pawnshop gets you a better price on watches, and with a gun the drunks stop jumping you on the way home.

Fights are a combo system: ten strikes, and the more Combat you have, the more you can chain together.

Spend it

• Move from the tent to a studio, up through the apartments to a penthouse in the Pinnacle, a townhouse on the Uptown mews, and the mansions on Cash Money Oaks. Owners pay property tax instead of rent.
  
• Furnish every room in build mode. Rugs go under the sofa, lights hang from the ceiling, the toaster sits on the counter. Six furniture stores, from cardboard to designer.
  
• Have Construction Co. build out the yard: a pool, a tennis court, an outdoor kitchen, a swim-up bar, a tanning deck and a gazebo.
  
• Two car dealerships. Cars wear down every night and need servicing. Bolt on speed parts and a built Apex One goes four times walking pace. A skateboard or scooter from the pawnshop gets you around until then.
  
• Clothes do things. The right shoes make you sprint faster, and some outfits get you staff discounts or raise your health. Seven slots, plus face tattoos at Bad Decisions.
  
• A bank with interest, a loan desk that collects every morning, ten stocks on the Street Exchange, daily lotteries and scratch cards.

Animals

Adopt a cat or a dog from the Second Chance shelter. Strays live rough in three parts of town: crouch down, hold out the right food, and see who comes forward. Up in the Galleria, the Menagerie sells a monkey, an anaconda, a wolf, a tiger and an elephant. Dress them in hats, sunglasses and gold chains, buy them beds, bowls and toys, and set up an aquarium, anything from a 2-gallon bowl to a 500-gallon reef. Keep as many animals as you want. The elephant will sit on your furniture now and then. The dog will eat your shoes.

Nights out

Dice, slots, blackjack and the wheel at the casino. Bet on the horses on the TV at the Salty Soup. Bowl league night at Rolling Thunder Lanes, then play pinball and VOID PATROL in the corner. Win trivia night at the Decanter. Or stay in and play MICRO LIFE, a tiny life sim on your own computer.

Quests

A starter road shows you the basics. Finish it and twelve more open up: climb to the corner office, run the watch racket, fall in love, fill the garage, win the belt, get every stray off the street, and more. Every step tells you which door to go to, and the map shows you where it is.

Play with friends

Up to four players over Steam, with friends or in public games, or over LAN. Everyone gets a house on the same street in Cash Money Oaks. Walk over to a friend's place, sleep on their couch, give them furniture when they move, bail them out of jail, spar with them, or put your money on the same horse. A whole quest road only works with friends.

Also

• Five districts in hand-drawn isometric pixel art, with day and night, four seasons, rain and thunderstorms
  
• Full controller support
  
• 53 Steam achievements