It would be cool if you could select the districts, you want access to and the game then limits rental / purchasable buildings only to those district or districts.
You then can also have the option to select the number of rivals as well.
So, the more rivals you choose and the less districts you select, the more challenging the game will be due to limited space.
Lastly you can select the End Goal / Goals for the challenge.
General Rules of the Challenge Mode
Only the districts chosen will be playable. If the game block off access to the other districts entirely, all shops should be available via the phone to still have access to import / exports and all shop items. You will just have to pay the delivery fee. My view however is not to restrict access to the other areas, but rather to just restrict the rental / purchase side of buildings outside of the selected districts.
Everyone already starts as rivals making it more challenging to find empty businesses. This will largely be affected by whether everyone can start on the same level or whether the rivals will start with their businesses already in place and own buildings. If all can’t start at the same level, there might need to be some tweaks to allow the player to be able to rent properties that is owned by rivals or it would be better if all buildings can be owned by the city at the start and just later acquired (via rent or purchase) so that you have the ability to buy out business without the restriction of rivals preventing it.
The rivals can also buy the player out. The player will however have the option to pay x amount to the city to prevent the buy-out. There should be a cooldown on the buy-out of a business to prevent buy-out spam. If a building owner is the same as the business owner, a buy-out would be calculated based on the value of the building and not the business.
Depending on the district chosen, warehouses will be limited or non-existent which will create another challenge since you can only import to a warehouse. The rivals should not be limited to go for business only, but use warehouses as well. Not sure if this will work, but it will be a nice challenge to have to actively fight for available warehouses as well.
Possible End Goals of the Challenge Mode
With the challenge could come various end goals. You can beat / loose the challenge by either of the following:
- The first one to reach an investment of $1,000,000
- The first one to reach a weekly income of $200,000
- The last man standing.
- The first one to open, 10 businesses (can also be increased depending on the number of rivals / districts selected) and keeps each business profitable for 5 weeks. There could be a countdown timer to show how many days remaining until the 5 weeks is up. It will then be up to the player to focus on disrupting the rival’s businesses to ensure one or more businesses end in a loss to restart the 5 weeks clock. This does not mean that the rivals cannot start more businesses. If one business fails, but the rival in the meantime started 2 other businesses that are successful, the 5 weeks countdown should continue.
- Survive for “x” number of weeks. The rivals could already have huge businesses and actively try to prevent you from entering the market. (renting any open spaces, poaching staff, lowering prices, etc.) The end goal could be to reach a weekly profit of $50,000.
All end goals should have the option to continue the game once achieved. It is frustrating if a gameplay ends the minute a challenge is completed or you have to try and postpone the completion since you want to do just that one more thing. A phone call from a rival stating they give up, will be sufficient.
There could be a lot more challenges /rules / goals implemented. This is just a basic list of what I could think of whilst typing. Also, the figures are random. I am not sure where the sweet spot should be.
Steam achievements for beating certain challenges could also be implemented.
Any other additions / suggestions to the above are more than welcome.