9/30/2026   

I've updated the Contractor and Property Manager in Real Estate Empire and made the bonus granting businesses (contractor, PM, realtor, Lumber Mart & Bank) twice as expensive to buy and upgrade.

The property manager and realtor now start with 175K instead of 200K.

I've dropped REE Experimental because I've decided that the changes I want to make to REE can be made to the original game.



5/31/2026   

I've been playing quite a bit of REE Classic lately and... I like it! The big problem is that the Contractor is the only class worth playing so this months update reduces starting cash for Contractors to $100K and bumps starting cash for the Property Manager and Realtor classes (both to $200K).



3/1/2026   

Big game play tweaks to Dungeons, Monsters and Loot this month with the goal of making the game play quicker and for it to be even more deadly!

1. Books now require 50 pages to be gathered rather than 75. Additionally it now takes 10 torches collected to gain an additional action, 25 food instead of 50 to increase max health and 15 instead of 30 potions to gain a potion.

2. All torches now carry over from previous levels.

3. Initial torches for each loot phase are now 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 and 4.

4. Monster hit points are reduced as follows:

Ogre from 3,000 to 2,000.
Croc from 3,800 to 2,500.
Snake from 4,800 to 3,500.
Ghoul from 6,000 to 4,000.
Vampire from 7,000 to 5,000.
Spider from 8,000 to 6,000.
Dragon from 10,000 to 8000.

5. Monster attacks are now more lethal:

Ogre: 7-8 now 10-11.
Croc: 8-11 now 13-15.
Snake: 15-10 now 20-25 poison was 1-3 and is now 2-4.
Ghoul: 13-18 now 16-21 (fear paralysis remains 1-2 turns).
Vampire: 15-19 now 20-25 and bite was 1-3 and is now 2-4.
Spider: 17-24 now 25-30 (web entanglement remains 1-2 turns).
Dragon: 10-12 now 15-18.
6. The hide of the croc now blocks 50 instead of 100 damage.

7. Dropped costs for Annie the assassin to upgrade sword skill. Then dropped all weapon upgrade costs by 40%.

8. Players now regain health 25% faster during the loot collection part of the game.




Plans for 2026:   

In 2026 I plan to continue tweaking & polishing the new version of Real Estate Empire and Dungeons, Monsters and Loot! Mostly I intend to focus on Business Empire and (finally) bringing it out of beta. More on this will follow as I clarify my thoughts.

Real Estate Empire Classic is a frozen version of that game that I will continue to make available as long as people are playing it. The new version of Real Estate Empire will continue to be tweaked and polished with the goal of making all three professions balanced as well as increasing the number of interesting decisions presented to the player.

All the best in 2026, thanks for coming and checking out my games!




10/31/2025 REE Experimental updates:   

More frequent foreclosures in all economies.
Foreclosures can show up as early as 3rd round instead of 5th.
Increased base rents.
Doubled gentrification bonus.
Reduced time from 144 months to 120 months.
Fixed bug where date could go past end of month when gaining a level.
Businesses are now more expensive (baseline of $4M).
Realtor sales commisions (buying and selling) are now 2.6%, 3.6%, 4.6% of sales price (depending on realtor level).
Property Manager rent bonuses are now rent plus 9%, 17% and 25% (depending on PM level).
Property Manager repair discounts are now rent plus 10%, 15% and 20% (depending on PM level).

Increased number of achievements before leveling up:
Contractor, 20 reno's for level 2.
Contractor, 50 reno's for level 3.
Property Manager, 20 repairs for level 2.
Property Manager, 50 repairs for level 3.
Realtor, 30 transactions for level 2.
Realtor, 60 transactions for level 3.






9/30/2025 Dungeons, Monsters and Loot! update:   

Made snake, ghoul, vampire and spider harder to kill.
Increased amount of health recovered while finding loot.
Changed amount of food required to increase max health from 40 to 50.
Fixed bug where getting multiple food at once (rare as that is) didn't award multiple max health increases.





9/9/2025   

Reduced repair times in half on apartments
Nudged up rents
Re-arranged information bar so all discounts are on RHS
Lumber Mart - change Const Discount to read Reno/Repairs Discount
Added information for businesses on property page to say how long it takes to improve a business
Made reno’s more profitable to justify the time investment




4/1/2025    We are still renovating our new old house but I should be back to work shortly. In the meantime I thought I'd post a roadmap for where I'm headed over the next number of months:

Real Estate Empire will be getting some significant upgrades that won't take too long. Upgrades and renovations will be on a different track rather than 2 upgrades = 1 renovation. An upgrade will be a more substantial rent increase and a full renovation won't earn a lot more rent than an upgrade. Gentrification will be harder and will still require all properties in a neighborhood to be fully renovated/in top condition. Rents will be higher. The investment bank will return less in bad economies than in good ones.

Dungeons, Monsters and Loot is mostly done from a game play perspective. More tweaking, tuning and bug fixes to come.

Business Empire will be getting a lot of attention. Right now it's way to hard to know what is going on and the game doesn't do a good job of explaining what you need to do. More to come on this in the future but Business Empire players will be seeing a lot of improvements in the coming months.

As always I expect to make any changes that affect scoring at month end. Visual upgrades and bug fixes will happen at any time. Thanks for reading and playing my games!





3/10/2025    Minor visual bug on REE fixed. On a personal note we are in the new house and renovations are moving along! Expect more regular site upgrades to resume by April 1st.





2/1/2025    More tuning on DML and a new story intro to each level. Lots of small tweaks and a big shift to making the game super challenging. My goal for this game is that, when done, every level completed, every monster beaten, will be a cause for celebration. This game is going to be hard!

Now that DML is beta I expect to be splitting my time between DML, REE and BE updates.

There may also be a new game in the works...





1/1/2025    This month I worked on tuning DML and I added a mouse over feature that will let you know how many tiles a particular move will grant you (including bonuses) and, if in combat, how much damage that particular move would do.

Going into 2025, DML is getting close to 1.0 but still needs more tuning and more work on the sound effects (especially in combat).

I still have some thoughts about tuning REE that I will try to accomplish in the coming months.

Mostly, 2025 will be focused on making Business Empire a better game. New features, a lot more tuning and also work on improving how information is presented to improve clarity about the state of the game.

Going forward I am contemplating a couple of new game designs but my primary focus these days is on tweaking and tuning the games I've already developed.

Thanks for playing my games in 2024, I hope you enjoy the ways in which they evolve in 2025!





12/1/2024    5 torch icons now required to get an additional torch/action in the exploration phase of the game.

Books require 100 pages to complete.

Starting torches are now as follows: 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 18, 17.

Game explanation at start of game has been given an overhaul.

Vampire bite now does 1-3 points of damage instead of 1.

Monster starting health are now as follows: orc = 3000, croc = 3500, giant snake = 4000, ghoul = 4500, vampire = 5500, Moregrave the spider = 6500, Syrix the dragon = 8000.

Difficulty ramp has been tilted, starting is much harder, slope increase is lower. The game is hard to beat.

Heroes regain health slowly during the exploration phase of the game. If 5 or more health are collected then a single hero in a coma is revived (if any) otherwise a single poisoned hero is cured of poison (if any) otherwise the most damaged hero will recover 1 health for every 3 grid items that were collected.

Narration text has been added in bottom right corner of the game.

A hero stuck in webs (while fighting Moregrave) loses stamina and is unable to fight as they struggle to break free.

Game win bonus is now 5 million points.

New color scheme behind grid icons during exploration phase to make patterns easier to see.

Fixed intermittent missing arrows bug.

Many other changes too numerous and small to be worth mentioning.




11/1/2024    This month is all DML all the time! Here are the changes:

Damage and poison carry over from battles and heroes are not automatically given a potion post-battle. Instead every action during a quest will create healing in this order: collecting 5 or more quest items in a single click will heal one hero in a coma, if no heroes are in a coma and 5 quest items are found at once then one hero will be healed of poison (if any are poisoned) otherwise the most injured hero will regain one point of health.

Snakes now poison instead of strangle.

Ghouls freezing touch immobilizes hero for 1-2 rounds while draining 10 stamina per round user is frozen.

When the Vampire attacks they also hypnotize their victim for 1-3 rounds during which time the hero cannot attack and loses 20 stamina per turn they are hypnotized. Every bite a hero takes will cause ongoing damage of 1 point per bite until the vampire is killed. Every point of ongoing bite damage will be added back to the vampires health. Moregrave the giant spider casts webs which will entangle a hero for 1-2 rounds. She also poisons any hero they attack for ongoing damage. Taking a potion will remove all poison from a heroes system.

In any of these cases, if all heroes are incapacitated at the same time (in a coma or immobilized in some way) then they will be instantly slain by the monster they are fighting.




10/1/2024    This month I have made changes to Real Estate Empire and Dungeons, Monsters and Loot!