SiliconAI

An old laptop, a bedroom in a sunny tech valley and an idea: that is all you need to build an AI holding with up to four companies. An affectionate parody of the valley world, with invented companies, characters and products.

FOUR COMPANIES, FOUR WAYS TO PLAY Every company has its own menu, its own mechanics and its own mini-games: • Agency Founder: take client orders, assemble the right team and hit your clients' taste in the mini-game "Nail the Brief". • Data Trader: collect, refine and sell data. Find the bottleneck in your product line and sort data at full speed in the mini-game. • SaaS Tinkerer: build apps in several phases, follow users, reviews and charts in the app studio, hunt bugs and ship updates. • Model Builder: train your own AI models in the lab, puzzle knowledge pieces into the model outline and take on big clients. Careful: wrong pieces are hallucinations. On top of that come more than a dozen mini-games, from Hackathon Rhythm to Privacy Redaction.

BUILD YOUR TEAM Hire people and AI robots. There are 35 different characters: 20 staff members and 15 robots. They have their own stats, jobs and experience; you train them and watch them work: typing, brooding, cheering, stretching.

WATCH YOUR COMPANY GROW Every purchase shows up in the room: a monitor instead of a game console, a GPU rig instead of a bookshelf. Each company grows through six stages, from the bedroom to a big headquarters. Over 100 items can be bought, upgraded and rearranged. Upgrades have a limit per room, every move unlocks more levels. Place matching items next to each other to unlock room combos with bonuses, 19 of them.

DECIDE, RESEARCH, RIDE OUT EVENTS More than 60 research topics, a skill tree with 40 skills for the founder, synergies between your companies and around 150 events: from "Mom calls you for dinner" through hackathons and investor pitches to the tricks of your rival. Some decisions are a gamble, with play money only, of course. Take out a loan at the in-game bank, follow the market trends and compete at the Valley Expo.

COMPETITION AND MARKET In every industry you share the market with your rivals; your market share affects your revenue. Now and then a rival launches an offensive: a warning first, then counter it with a price cut, a counter product or a rumor. Later you buy shares in your rivals, with play money only and no real money, collect dividends and take over weakened competitors.

VALLEY OBSERVER Every quarter the Valley Observer comes out as a newspaper about your game: a headline with a picture, classifieds, horoscope, weather and a column by Chad.

VALLEY RADIO Tap the radio in your room: music, ads, weather and news from your own game, with punchlines, read by a radio voice. The top bar shows what is playing. Optional, and you can switch it off at any time.

AND THEN: MEGAMIND Chad Maximus, CEO of MegaMind Corp., stole your first idea. Now it is your turn: overtake the competition in the ranking, lead your holding through the chapters up to the takeover of MegaMind Corp. and decide in the endgame how the story of AI ends. Four different endings await.

GAME CENTER Compete with others on the "Holding Value" leaderboard and collect 32 achievements. Game Center is optional; the game works without signing in.

FAIR AND CALM • Pay once, play forever: no ads, no in-app purchases • No account, no analytics, no sharing of data • Your save game stays on your device • The game pauses while you are away; after a longer break "Where you left off" calmly sums up what is waiting • Sound, music and haptics can be switched off separately • English and German, switchable in the game • iPhone in portrait, iPad in landscape

Note: all companies, characters and products in the game are invented. Any resemblance to real companies is purely parodic.

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