Welcome to the Chaos of Game Consulting

ConsultingLina is a satire-based mobile simulation game where you play as Lina, an overworked freelance consultant navigating the absurdities of game development. The goal is to guide procedurally generated, deeply dysfunctional game studios through chaotic development cycles and keep them barely afloat. It blends humor, management mechanics, and narrative events into one unpredictable ride. Rather than managing resources with precision, your tools are vague advice, buzzwords, and sheer survival instinct. The game parodies real industry trends, decision-making dysfunction, and management speak. It’s about thriving in confusion — or at least billing for it.

While it will absolutely hit harder for those familiar with agile meetings, game production pipelines, or the horror of live service pitches, ConsultingLina is for anyone who enjoys satire and simulation-style games. The humor is layered, with surface-level chaos for casual players and deeper jokes for industry veterans. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at a pivot meeting or seen a slide deck filled with synergy and vision alignment, you’ll feel at home here. But even if not, it’s still a chaotic ride through absurd startup drama. No consulting experience required — just a tolerance for fictional nonsense.

You’ll receive randomized client briefs, each representing a fictional studio with impossible goals and mismatched genres. As Lina, you manage your time, energy, and consulting tools to try and keep things moving forward. Players must provide advice using decks of jargon cards, choose when to intervene, and deal with dynamic office events like passive-aggressive PMs or rogue interns. There’s no “win” condition in the traditional sense — survival is the win. If the client ships something semi-playable and you don’t burn out, you’ve done your job.

Officially? No. Unofficially? Let’s just say we’ve “borrowed from reality” heavily. Every scenario is an exaggerated mashup of real-world trends, stories, and studio archetypes we’ve encountered (or heard whispered at GDC). You might recognize elements from mobile game fads, indie chaos, and even AAA-scale dysfunction. But everything is fictional and lovingly parodied — the game is a mirror, not a memo.

The Burnout Meter reflects Lina’s energy and mental state. It rises with overtime, client demands, chaotic pivots, and dealing with endless feedback loops. When it gets too high, Lina starts misfiring — she might skip deadlines, send confusing reports, or ghost meetings entirely. To manage it, you’ll need to rest, push back diplomatically, or secretly offload work. Burnout isn’t just flavor text — it’s a central mechanic that can unravel entire projects if left unchecked.

Yes, each session generates unique clients, feature demands, and studio dramas using a large set of procedural elements. You might get a dating sim with monetized fishing mechanics one day and a serious political roguelike with horse physics the next. The events, buzzword decks, office crises, and even Lina’s internal monologues change every round. This randomness makes every consulting attempt different — and usually worse in a different way.

Yes. We plan to expand the number of client types, internal tools, and satirical content based on feedback from players and our own backlog of ridiculous game industry stories. Possible additions include seasonal disasters, office pets, automated Slackbots, and DLCs like “ConsultingLina: Corporate Retreats.” We’re also considering features like player-submitted fake studios and alternate consulting personas. Updates will be frequent — assuming Lina doesn’t collapse first.

At launch, yes — ConsultingLina is a solo experience. However, we’re exploring potential multiplayer-style additions where players can “compare” their consulting runs, trade buzzword cards, or even sabotage each other’s clients in an asynchronous chaos mode. There’s also a plan for a “ghost replay” mode where you can watch other Linas fail heroically. But the core experience is designed to mimic the loneliness of being the only sane person in a burning studio.

Both. The game lovingly mocks everything from broken pipelines and vague game pitches to toxic sprints and marketing fluff. But it also celebrates the resilience, creativity, and strange hope that keep game development going despite everything. Lina’s job is impossible, but she keeps showing up — and that’s the real soul of the satire. Behind the jokes is a deep appreciation for everyone who's ever tried to ship something real.

Yes. While the game is heavily systemic, your consulting choices shape how the team reacts, what features make it into the game, and what chaos erupts later. If you promise an NFT roadmap too early or recommend multiplayer in a solo horror title, you’ll deal with the fallout. Each run becomes a story — not just of the client studio, but of Lina’s personal battle with absurdity.