Over the past few months I’ve been getting loads of great feedback and ideas for content from the community, so I thought it would be useful for me to collect them all here under one post that I can update with new ones as they come in:
- Make a strategic decision in the game. Hard/expensive to cancel might keep your edge cases enrolled, but cause potential new members to be wary of signing. Or make it easy/cheap to cancel and focus your efforts to making your members want to keep up their membership (or cheap enough where they forget about it).
- I think sim personalities could be really deep too, like having jocks, beefcakes, “fatties”, hotties, creeps, ‘new years resolutioners’ etc all as different types of sim who look for different things in the gym… Then you could have all sorts of policies, like having mean beefcakes pick on “fatties” then get kicked out which would mean that type of sim would be less likely to visit the gym etc.
- If you like the idea of different categories of clients in a stereotype kinda way, I’d suggest checking out…
- Casino games like Casino Inc, they tend to have clients like “high roller” and “trailer park trash” who look for different objects and come at different times of day etc…
- Restaurant games like Pizza Tycoon or Pizza Connection, similarly they have categories of people that behave differently but are again stereotypical, like students who prefer cheap pizza or tourists who like big portions and local ingredients…
- The skill in these games wasn’t necessarily to satisfy everyone in one place, but to initially focus on one demographic… I remember in pizza tycoon, if you tried to please everyone at the same time you had to create a big menu of lots of pizzas and a wide range of prices but this would bankrupt you quickly because you had to buy loads of ingredients to start etc…
- Then I think about applying this to a gym and you could have really complex mechanics in there, like a “jock” could get sponsorships for your gym, but if he doesn’t have a good personality he might bully a “slob” character and lower your gyms reputation etc…
- Be able to sponsor and send your best customers / employees to sporting events and compete against people from other gyms -> bring home fabulous prizes if your envoy wins
- Be able to sell “supplements” that give your people a boost to training, but beware that inspectors can randomly show up and fine you if they bump into someone who has been doping
- Be able to host tournaments with people from your gym. Have the ability to fill out a bracket before everyone squares off and win fabulous prizes if your bracket is good enough
- Get offers from apparel companies to sponsor your gym, perhaps triggering some sort of minigame to place ads around and make your employees wear the right clothes
- Fitness classes!! Obviously you can’t use brand names but variations for hot yoga, spinning, Crossfit, Zumba, etc
- Specialties- be an indoor climbing gym, boxing gym, mma gym, old people gym, women’s only gym, Strongman gym, etc. Hot yoga would require special equipment and room design of course… or have a bit of everything
- Different policies you can choose (e.g no grunting like Planet Fitness, maybe even have some controversial choices like no fat people).
- Shops you can sell product in
- Spa equipment- sports massage, ice baths, steam room, sauna
- Personal trainers (requires offices) and dieticians
- Parking (this is always a big problem at real gyms so it should be a problem you have to deal with in game)
- Entertainment (piped in music, TVs, live DJs, etc)
- Build obstacle courses for indoors and outdoors
- Floor mats (all kinds… the kind you put in MMA gyms vs the kind you put in a yoga room)
- Sanitation- keeping the gym clean is a big one. I’ve heard of ringworm outbreaks at MMA gyms because everyone is rolling around on the same mat
- Floor maintenance- with heavy free weights on the floor you bet your floor is going to need maintenance
- day/night cycle with rush hour schedules, and even a calendar so we can mimic the new year resolutioners
- built in daycare (fancy gyms have this to attract rich people with kids)
- Group sports equipment- tennis courts, volleyball courts, basketball courts
- Other- indoor running track, swimming pools, hot tubs
- gym floor maintenance- things like people not cleaning up after themselves, spilling water, not putting weights back, etc.
- Research tree- research sales tactics, sports recovery objects, weight loss equipment (things like scanners for measuring fat, etc), products, ads, sanitation, etc. Research tree- research sales tactics, sports recovery objects, weight loss equipment (things like scanners for measuring fat, etc), products, ads, sanitation, etc.
- Management curveballs- deal with things like lockeroom thefts, customers hogging equipment but not working out, vandals, not enough parking, bad personal trainers, injury lawsuits (from not offering orientation or from wet floors or ringworms or bad personal trainers or other negligence)
- Campaign mode with different scenarios. I can see one where you have plenty of land to do whatever, one where you have a run down gym in the inner city, one where you are in Beverly Hills and you have demanding celevrjtu customers, one where you are in NYC with limited space, one where you are a UFC gym, one where you are trying to churn out Strongman competition winners, one where it’s just obstacles for competitions similar to American Ninja Warriors, one where you have alot of obese customers and you have to help them reach their weight loss goals, etc
- Make the structure and flow of the game unique to that of a gym. If you can replace the word “Gym” with any other business by swapping just the names and art, you need to make it more distinct.
- Having a varied array of potential gym members (Gym Rat, Health Nut, Morbidly Obese Couch Potato, Sports Athletes, Fit Flirters etc, each with different wants, needs and desires. Maps with different distributions of these populations would allow for a variety of strategies and make different gym setups ideal in different locations.
- Catering to different kinds of crowds?
- Family gym vs gym for moms vs gym for fitness buffs?
- Fitness club vs gym vs powerlifting gym
- Income wise it would need to take into account that the primary focus of a gym business is not at all to provide a gym, its to get people subscribing – you then ignore them and hope they forget, but keep paying you.
- At the same time, things like building upgrades/expansion, scheduled classes based on demand, allowing personal trainers to use your gym in exchange for a cut, advertising (celebrity endorsement, local, leaflets, tv, radio, etc).
- Would love to see some kind of visual progress for customers – if obese guy/girl could become fit after several months of exercising. I think it could be quite inspirational. Also would be really cool if each customer has its own exercise schedule: yoga at monday, swimming at tuesday, etc. Overall, really cool idea, good luck to you!
- Look in to theme hospital. One game play element I like is how you can hire doctors and they have different levels of skills and speciality. Only a few can operate certain equipment. Maybe u can set that up. You have trainers that have their own attribute like strenght, cardio, and flexibility and they have their salary. Maybe only a certain trainer can teach certain class or equipments. Maybe when u hire trainers, u can also can bring in their client and vice versa. Maybe there’s a trend and there’s a demand for certain classes or equipment. You can even add in dietian and supplements.
- It will be cool to reward upgrades based on memberships. If the gym membership reaches 500, you get to have a yoga room or sauna or climbing wall. This will give players some goals in mine to ground their membership and profit
- Those bodybuilding cup like “Arnold classic”, steroid market and perhaps play with an avatar mode (I remember how douchebag workout was funny)
- Since you’re training clients, there should be a stat that tells you how fit the client is, and how much you have improved their fitness level with your training. Maybe the better the average improvement of all your clients, the more you can charge future clients.
- And you should be able to make “Before and After” ads featuring your clients, which would be both fan-service and a perfectly valid game mechanic.
- My personal recommendation would be to first make sure that all essential camera controls can be handled exclusively with the mouse.
- Furthermore, you should orient yourself based on how other tycoon games handle their camera controls. That way, a veteran of tycoon games will be instantly familiar with your camera controls.
- The most important question, however is, what camera maneuvers will the player need to get all the information he or she needs to make the right decision in any situation that might arise during gameplay.
- I usually use WASD to pan the camera, i hate it when games excluse that. Besides that scroll wheel to zoom in and out. I rarely take advantage of any other features.
- But I would like to add that if you have the option to use keys to scroll the view then please make them rebindable. As while most people use WASD, I only ever use the arrow keys, and am automatically put off any game that forces me to use WASD and with no option to rebind them (and then I have to mess around with autohotkey, which is annoying in itself, but even more annoying if I have to use WASD as letter keys for typing in-game).
- Is there a way to upgrade your gym at a certain point? And will your other gyms keep gaining money while you are in a different gym
- Also, will there be an online feature where you can upvote or downvote other people’s gyms?
- Another idea that I would love is furniture, having a lobby in some of the larger gyms that you can customize or it can be prefurnished
- having to get a certain amount of memberships before you can get the next gym
- Different kinds of athletic equipment, starting out with tires or something and moving up to high level equipment that are more expensive
- Leveling up points that you can use to upgrade your gym at the “Black Market”
- Starting in a small town and moving up to international (USA, Japan, Canada, England, etc etc.) kind of like pocket planes or an airport sim
- Buy properties that you can’t customize that will also make you more money (But not like a cookie clicker type thing)
- Vending machines and food shops that will keep people at the gym longer, in the black market an energy drink that keeps people at your gym for a full 24 hours but makes them less happy
- UI
- I think that the members should be the total and a graph. The popularity should be out of five stars and a couple of randomized “Welp!” reviews depending on the stars. Staff should be the staff’s names and their strengths and weaknesses.
- Does gym empire have upgradable music stations? Speakers? Help motivate the gymers
- Unlockable soundtracks/tunes might be cool too. A reward for special achievements.
- You should have that disaster function too, like Godzilla smashing your Sim City.