Alexander Blair Design Engineer
← All projects Project / 06

Play it here · In development

RentRaiser

Build an empire.
Become the problem.

An idle property game where getting ahead makes life harder for everyone else.

No download · Keyboard + touch
Sound starts when you play. Your city saves on this device.

Psst… snoop around

Getting Line City ready…

Arrow keys / WASD · Space to boost
Open full screen ↗

The problem

What does winning cost everyone else?

RentRaiser is a satire of capitalism and a housing market that has stopped making sense. Prices climb. The residents barely react. Everyone expects to pay more and get less.

Norm, your guide, performs enthusiasm for you, until even he can't hide his disgust. The better you do, the less he celebrates. The joke asks a simple question: when getting ahead makes life worse for everyone else, what counts as winning?

01 Norm looking happy. The welcome

Enthusiasm is part of the job.

02 Norm looking suspicious. The suspicion

Your success starts to concern him.

03 Norm looking disgusted. The judgment

Even Norm has his limits.

Norm’s expression studies. The guide’s approval runs in the opposite direction to the player’s profits.

The approach

An unlikely pairing.

Buy an upgrade. Watch the numbers climb. Repeat. AdVenture Capitalist turned that simple loop into a commercial hit. A screen of buttons and progress bars was enough to keep players coming back.

OutRun supplied the visual starting point. An arcade hit and technical achievement in 1986, its almost-3D world still feels wonderfully strange. What drew me in was the gap between flat graphics and convincing depth. That imperfect illusion made it more fun.

The challenge was to recreate that feeling and pair it with the pull of one more upgrade. In RentRaiser, the numbers climb, the city changes, and every success makes it a little less affordable.

A concept collage blending an OutRun driving scene with AdVenture Capitalist characters and money bags.
A concept collage combining OutRun and AdVenture Capitalist, the two starting points for RentRaiser.

Make a fortune. Find a better way.

AdVenture Capitalist makes money absurd. Each return brings a balance that makes the last one look small. RentRaiser builds toward that feeling through property milestones: buy a building, improve its earnings, and hire a manager to keep rent collecting while you’re away.

The next step is a leaderboard built around three-day runs. A fixed finish line makes every purchase a strategic choice: invest in upgrades, save for the next building, or race to fund an earlier purchase. The aim is a game worth replaying, with new ways to earn faster each time.

The income loopDesign concept
Building purchases accelerate earnings over a three-day run. An illustrative graph of total earnings. Early manual collection pauses until a manager is hired. Apartments and a tower raise the earning rate, and hiring each building's manager keeps rent collecting automatically. The curve becomes progressively steeper. This is a design concept, not recorded gameplay data. Day 0Day 1Day 2Day 3 TOTAL EARNED Duplex Apartments Tower
07 / 07
Three days. Another strategy.

The planned leaderboard gives each run a finish line.

Manager hired
Illustrated progression, not a recorded run. New properties raise the earning rate; managers keep rent collecting while you’re away.

The hard part

Drawing a 3D World in a 2D Engine.

The spare linework hides a surprisingly complex engine. Every building starts as points in space. Custom projection math turns those points into screen positions, recalculating their scale and perspective as the camera moves.

Depth sorting, hidden-surface calculations, and a gradual transition into the skyline keep the scene readable. Making it look simple meant getting those systems to agree.

Inside the drawing engineTry it yourself

Grab the orange camera. Move it inside the box to change your view.

Move the camera across X and Z, then change its height with Y. Every corner is redrawn from the same perspective math. The full engine also handles occlusion and skyline transitions.

Outcome

From the original prototype to the browser.

Built first in Godot, RentRaiser now runs natively in the browser with TypeScript and Canvas 2D. Development continues, with the current browser build playable above.

The city ahead

A bigger city. More ways to build.

The playable game now spans three chapters and 28 properties. This earlier architectural study explores building shapes and upgrades that add rooms, improve entrances, and put rooftops to work.

Playable property
00 / 03Before upgrades

Rent at full occupancy

$25every 8s1× base rent
Potential / sec
$3.13
Purchase
$100
Upgrades so far
$0

Assumes full occupancy and immediate collection. Managers collect on their own schedule.

What’s installed

Three upgrade paths
Entrance
0 / 3
  1. AwningsNot installed
  2. Lights + plantersNot installed
  3. Seating terraceNot installed
Extra space
0 / 3
  1. Side roomNot installed
  2. Upper roomNot installed
  3. Roof gardenNot installed
Roof equipment
0 / 3
  1. ChimneyNot installed
  2. Satellite dishNot installed
  3. Solar panelsNot installed

Move right to add the first upgrade in each path. Earlier additions stay in place.

W / S · ↑ ↓ Buildings
A / D · ← → Stages

Stages combine all three upgrade paths. This gallery preserves earlier design concepts; play above for the current buildings and upgrades.Open comparison sheets ↗
Next project Flowmaster