Taking an unusual setting and theme for a game, this one puts the player in the old town of Edinburgh, Scotland, as an agent in the employ of the the Moving Target Estate Agency—a suit in charge of renting and managing properties on behalf of absentee landlords. But buildings in old towns hide old secrets, and when the no-nonsense boss Patricia McCorquodale (aka The Crocodile) fires a co-worker, divides up her portfolio and gives the player the responsibility of generating revenue from the grim old house at 57 Crowther Terrace, the property begins divulging hints regarding why it was so hard to rent. The hauntings, for example.
But the player is under Glengarry Glen Ross pressure to outperform a corporate rival or find themselves in the dole queue, and so players get to make choices from lists of options. Choices about what rent rate to ask of the nice family, which aspects of the neighbourhood to emphasize when making the sell and whether to dispatch an exterminator when they complain of scratching in the walls at night. When the tenants are driven off by too many consecutive sleepless nights, as the property’s notoriety grows other segments of the rental market can be tapped into: student residences, parlours for rich weirdos, a recording studio for a black metal band. The property will suffer from unexplained fires, paranormal manifestations, and perhaps most horrifying of all: rent-free artist squatters.
Will a seance reveal the true nature of the apparitions? Will the tenants survive? Will the residence be featured on a reality TV show about haunted houses? Will the player be unemployed at the start of the next pay period? Read on, as the player’s decisions inform numerical statistics behind the scenes, which modify the text that then unfolds, describing to them the outcome of their shrewd choices.
In addition to iOS and Android mobile devices, the game is available for local computer play (through the Chrome web browser on Windows, Mac and Linux machines) through purchase from the Chrome Web Store.