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Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism

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I've been rebuilding old games with Claude. While creating a modern take on SimTower and having election news on TV in the background, I had the idea to build the economy of the game around democratic socialism instead of capitalism.Instead of a real estate tycoon, you are an elected steward of the building, held responsible by the Assembly. Homes are allocated off a waitlist, dues are set on a sliding scale, and you face outside pressures from neighboring capitalist landlords.The crown jewel is attracting a large grant to establish an observatory at the top of your tower, attracting scientists. To get there, you must make sure the people are fed, housed, healthy, and entertained. If the Assembly doesn't have confidence in your abilities, you get voted out.It kinda works, and the potential failures in the game are pretty unique. I'd be interested to hear HN's take. An entire SimCity clone based on a different economy like this could be fun.

HN · launched Aug 6, 2026 · 41 upvotes (top 15%) · 0 views

Niche: management and simulation games · 82 launches, 5 in the last 7 days ▼ -58% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Media & entertainment
  • Content generation
  • B2C
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

Yes The author explicitly created this indie 2D simulation game using Claude and web/Tauri technologies, proving it is fully vibe-codeable.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Sim Tower

Concerns raised: Drag functionality not working on Android/Waterfox, Early game progression is slow, Elevator demand is too high relative to capacity, Building floor before room/office is unintuitive, Stairs difficult to build vertically

Feature requests: Save/export game state for cross-device transfer and backups, Progressive Web App version, Multiple elevator cars in single shaft, Auto-build floors when creating rooms, More obvious volume control UI

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 273 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #59 of 274 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 281 days after the earliest competitor.

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.