A parody of the common farming game convention of the city folk moving into the countryside to start a farm while teaching history from leftist perspective.
So the game start with a the scene of a country person stuck in the booooooring farming job, until they heard about the awesome life in the city where there are a lot of jobs and cool brand spanking new technology. So they move to the city and starts out in a tiny tenement and have to work in the factory doing repetitive tasks for 12 hours a day.
Now the satirical/subversive part is how the game is presented. When you start out in your dinky little flat the game presents you with an upgrade menu that teases tons of upgrades: bathtub! oven! new wallpapers! more rooms! wallpapers! And so on. So you go to the factory and do the minigames to represent work.
When you start from raw material, the game shows its value starting from something very small like 1 money or something, and as you finish each minigames the goods becomes increasingly valuable until it is worth 100 money; enough for a new wallpaper! Then you toss it in the collection bin, producing 10 goods that day. Then you get into the sleeptime income screen and you get... 10 money. Alright, you have to work for 10 days to get the new wallpaper, I mean in other farming games even the beets need at least 3 days to grow. Except that after food and heating you're down 3 money.
And when you're working, the game presents you with a XP bar for the job. Oh, that means if you work hard enough you will be promoted and get paid more right? Well, when you're halfway through filling it you got hit by a paycut that turn your wage into just 0.5 money per goods, and when you filled the bar you got presented with... nothing. I guess your supervisor congratulates you or something, but materially you get nothing. I suppose with the setting fictionalized, maybe you'll get a worthless ribbon or certificate or something.
This will go on indefinitely and the player might thought of talking with the supervisor, which leads to your character getting told to get back to work. Repeating this again would lead your character getting beaten up. Of course, one option is to talk directly to the boss. So you go up to his mansion, and the guard shoots you in the face.
Might try writing this on Twine.
And the only way the character can possibly earn enough is to pursue the unionisation sidequest, along with the union busting / pinkertons that come along with it, risking complete destitution
Leftist revenge farming game where you play as a bourgeoise urban academic 😈
Brings to mind Cart Life. A game where you have a food cart and try not to starve to death while making some money. But nothing is assured. Oh you want to go buy that food cart. How are you getting there? Walking? Taking the bus? Well that'll wear out your shoes and tire you out and of course you can't take your cart on the bus so you'll be walking anyway. Maybe have some coffee to not get tired but dang now I'm addicted to coffee. And after buying ingredients I have $0 money for rent so hopefully that's ok... Etc
Opposite of an idle game. Instead of progressing by doing nothing, you don't progress by doing a lot!
When the bar fills up it turns out it's some district production benchmark and you just get a $20 gift certificate to a restaurant that isn't even in that city and is totally useless to the player
Ever since my thoughts on socialist nations versions of Oregon Trail, I thought a video game of being a soviet bureaucrat overseeing the formation of a new kolkhoz would be a good farming game.
You should get to see you produced $180 worth of goods that day but only get paid $1 per day. Then if you complain you get fired and have to start over somewhere else.
The only way to win is to arm the unhoused you pass by on the way to the job. This is only feasible after completing the Union sidequest to get some moderate income/comfort, then going into the Community Organization quest that starts off with simple Mutual Aid tasks. Many other options can be pursued that don't lead to any meaningful change, but can deplete the Orgs funds that would have been used for arming/training/organizing the unhoused.
You could set it historically, have some poor former peasant/cottage worker move into the city and experience Charles Dickens first hand. You get a job as a Scullery maid or a factory worker in some shitty conditions. Factory worker makes just enough to get by...until they get sick. Maid gets free board but no freedom and a horrible life.
Gotta work out how to organise. Perhaps the maid starts organising the below stairs staff. Perhaps the worker forms a pooled mutual society. Both sides merge to form a union.
Hardtown: Classbreakers.
I could see a social stealth game where you're doing all this but one of your coworkers eventually asks if you're fed up with this shit and then quietly inducts you in to the unionization effort.
you ought to check out cloudpunk, its actually not worlds away from what youre describing - a country girl forced to move to the cyberpunk dystopia big city, with shitty (flying) cab driving instead of factory job, and more story-driven, but really great and very anti-capitalist (and with an actual message of hope even amongst all the awfulness)
Half way through the game it starts showing you the lifestyle of the CEO as you and your coworkers continue working. You get the execs yachts, then a new house, then a mansion, then a superyacht, and at the end they start a new company and you see them setting up the same thing you're doing but in another building, with more people being funneled in.
