What is Hundred Stories?
Hundred Stories is a tower-building game that runs in your browser. You start with a lobby and a little cash, rent floors to tenants, and keep them happy as the tower grows toward 100 floors. The game's home page describes it as "a tower-building game, free to start" with no sign-up.
We made it ourselves. It is a side project, and it is also proof of how we work: we build a whole product, ship it, and run it.
Why build a game at all?
Because a game punishes sloppy systems fast. Tenants in Hundred Stories leave when elevators are slow, neighbors are noisy or rooms are dirty. The home page says every room, price, elevator and stress rule is set up so a tower can fail.
That is a good test of how we think. A system that cannot fail teaches nothing. A business owner asking whether we can be trusted with their email, their website or their reports should want a team that designs for the failure case first.
How much of the game is free?
It is free to start. The free game goes up to floor 20 and has every room and event up to 3 stars. According to the home page, one purchase in the iPhone app unlocks the rest of the tower, and there are no ads. The App Store version is listed as coming soon and the Android version as coming later, and the page gives no dates.
What does it do with your data?
Almost nothing. The home page says there is no account and no tracking, and that nothing leaves your device unless you send feedback. Your tower saves in the browser you play in. You can save it to a file as a backup, and the play page warns that clearing the site's data deletes the tower.
For a small business, the lesson is plain. We decide what to collect before we build, not after. If we do not need it, we do not ask for it.
Does it work offline and on a phone?
Yes to both. The home page says you can install it once from your browser menu and it works without the internet. It plays on a phone, tablet or desktop. On a touch screen, one finger moves the view, a pinch zooms, and you tap to place a room.
What did we keep, and what is the catch?
We kept the design discipline and were upfront about where the idea came from. The home page calls the game a from-scratch homage to SimTower, the 1994 tower sim, with original code and art, and says it is not affiliated with Electronic Arts, Maxis or OPeNBooK. The code is under a PolyForm Strict license, per the same page.
The catch is that it is a side project, and the free game stops at floor 20. If you want to see how we build, play it and tell us what breaks.
More on the product itself is on the Hundred Stories page.