The central banks have lost control. Prices are increasing at an alarming rate. Economic growth is stalling and money-less clouds loom over the horizon. Welcome to Hyperinflation Mode, a new setting for This Grand Life in 2022.

In a normal game, the central bank will raise interest rates to stay ahead of inflation and there is a dampener effect to make sure the economic conditions are always playable to some extent.

For Hyperinflation Mode, I've added a permanent upwards pressure on inflation (caused by various external factors). The central bank is also much more reluctant to increase interest rates to control it, preferring to preserve economic growth as much as they can.

In this hyperinflationary life, can you still achieve your financial goals as they move further out of reach with each passing week? Or perhaps it's easier to focus on other goals in such an environment...

DISCLAIMER: Any similarities to central banks, living or dead, or actual economic conditions is purely coincidental.

Release 1.30:

• Added Hyperinflation Mode
  
• Fixed Doctor education not contributing to knowledge goal
  
• Added Private Investigator business

Very small change that's been bugging me for years, default difficulty is now born in a public hospital and no longer on a golden pedestal.

This update features a new Survival Mode, Hospital location and doctor career path.


In Survival Mode you have been diagnosed with Zombitus, a terminal disease with no cure. Doctors have given you a few months to a few years to live. The disease will progress faster as time goes on and treatments will become more expensive. Eventually, they will be unable to slow the disease's advance.

When in Survival Mode, your current score is displayed prominently on the weekly summary. What do you want to achieve in your remaining time? You can aim for maximum happiness, wealth or knowledge, or just try to get as high a score as possible. You could also try to stay alive as long as you can.

To go with this new game mode, we also have a new Hospital location where you will go for Zombitus Treatments.


At the Hospital you can donate blood to trade health for happiness, or attend your yearly checkup for a big health boost. You can also embark on one of the longest career paths in the game - becoming a doctor.

In real life, it takes between 12-16 years to become a specialized doctor (surgeon, physician, etc). In the game I've shortened it slightly, but it's still a long and grueling process of studying and working to reach the top. To compensate, the wage rates are also the highest in the game. As with the other career paths, the wage rates on the doctor career path are based on real life statistics.

Here's the full list of changes in Release 1.2:

• Added Survival Mode and related items
• Added Transportation Services business
• Added Real Estate business and related education
• Added Gym Trainer and Gym Manager to Stadium
• Added Volunteer As Coordinator to Town Hall
• Added Hospital location to all maps
• Added Doctor career path and education
• Added Donate Blood and Yearly Checkup special events to Hospital
• Added education and experience speed advanced options
• Changed grocery subscription delivery description to be generic
• Implemented home restrictions for actions from data files
• Implemented healthcare cost modifier for actions from data files
• Added mode played to scoreboard
• Removed Bachelor Of Engineering from trait selection
• Implemented proper score calculation even without achieving goals
• Added new 'Read' action for items on Possessions screen
• Realigned suppress and close buttons on Weekly Summary

I've uploaded a new trailer that should give people a better idea on the core gameplay of This Grand Life (first one on the store page). I think the other trailer emphasized the advanced features too much, so some players weren't getting what they expected.

https://youtu.be/Fa4NDFqS5FU
I understand the game isn't for everybody and didn't intend it to be, or I would have added zombie career paths with crafting mechanics. I'd rather have fewer sales to happy customers than more sales to unhappy customers. Hopefully the new trailer better highlights the incremental decisions that are the main part of the game.

This Grand Life has now been fully released onto the main branch.

A big thank you to all the players who have been on this journey with me. We've grown our careers, bought our first homes, become landlords, started our own businesses and invested in stocks. We've been homeless, alcoholics, avid collectors and lottery winners.

If you're looking for even more content, remember there's Steam workshop support. Here you can find some mods like Vlade's megamod, which has a large number of additional career paths like sports star and criminal.

Thanks for playing This Grand Life, I hope the game helps you in your real life in some little way!

With This Grand Life's full launch coming up on April 17th, I have updated the TEST branch to Release 1.00. On launch day, this version will be put on the main branch and everywhere else. The main additions are a local scoreboard and the new Berlin map (as voted for by the community).

The local scoreboard will keep track of all the lives you've lived. Every time you win a game, a final score is calculated and added to the board. Below is what it looks like with some scores I made up.

Next is the Berlin map. Berlin's map traits are Engineering Powerhouse, Diverse Architecture and Automotive Pioneer.

You can purchase a Large Garage at Brandenburg Gate to begin collecting the city's unique collectibles, luxury cars. All the collectible car names are based on German brands and range from the Folkswaggin Gulf to the Porch Sports Car. This is by far the most expensive collection in the game.

The special thing about these collectibles is that you can ride them just like you would a normal car! They travel faster but are also more expensive to run, especially the higher-end cars. They also never break down and don't require repairs.

Another small change is all collectible containers getting their own default theme colour now, which you can still paint over if desired.

Finally, a little fun fact that I discovered about This Grand Life's players - the same number of people have played the stock market as have played the lottery. Coincidence?

Here are the full list of changes in Release 1.00:

• Added Berlin as playable city
• Added Berlin collectible and drivable cars
• Fixed Infonet not showing more than 10 items when viewing all jobs at location
• Fixed employee and materials window not following freelance business window colour scheme
• Changed 'debt due next week' to show negative amounts
• Tweaked and enabled scoreboard
• Added functionality for collectibles to be used as normal possessions
• Realigned some stuff
• Added default theme colours for collectibles
• Updated tutorial images

Alpha 2.6 has been released. This is mostly a re-balancing and minor improvements update.

Now your business supervisors can auto-buy materials to the amount you set at the start of each week, as long as you have the money to afford it.

I also noticed that not many people bother to change their default business theme with Cans Of Paint, so each business will get its own colour theme now. You can still repaint it yourself if you don't like the new defaults.

A useful addition for education is a new Teaching Tutors home service, available from the Small House and above. When this service is active, a part of your degree or diploma will be completed automatically at the end of each week. This costs quite a bit of money, but it helps automate the studying process for those who can afford it. I would suggest unsubscribing when the academic term is not running, otherwise you are just wasting money!

• Added freelance business supervisor auto-buying materials option
• Added Teaching Tutors home service to Small House and above
• Reduced auction fee from 5% to 3%
• Reduced effectiveness of electric scooter and small car
• Changed spouse income from Misc Income to Family Income
• Tweaked travel time modifier calculation
• Added travel time modifier display
• Workers no longer quit when you can't afford wages, debt added instead
• Need to pay two week's wages when firing employees
• Finished moving 99% of English into data files
• Added default freelance business themes
• Fixed education tooltip not displaying whether semester-only studying
• Slightly reduced average date time

That's right, This Grand Life has been deemed worthy of Steam Trading Cards and you should see them dropping into your inventory soon.

Enjoy!

The release launch date is set for This Grand Life on 17th April, 2018!

What does this mean?

This means there won't be any more major features added. The next two months will involve polishing up the game, tweaking some mechanics and adding other minor features.

Also from the poll we ran a few weeks ago, Berlin was the most voted for city to appear in the game. I'll be working on that and it should be available for launch day.

I'll be spending more time working on promotion and getting the word out, so game updates won't be as fast and furious as they were during the early days of development.

It's great to see so many people have enjoyed the game so far, and I'm looking forward to see what the future holds!