About the studio
Deep simulation games, made by a small studio.
Lakeside Games is an independent studio making deep simulation games: a political world that advances every hour, a corporate economy you can take apart, centuries of grand strategy that do not wait for you, and election campaigns you can rewrite.
We build the kind of games we wanted to play and could not find: simulations with enough depth that the interesting stories come out of the systems, not out of a script. A political world that keeps moving whether you are there or not. A corporate economy where control is a real thing you can lose. A grand strategy game that lets a century unfold around your decisions.
We run everything ourselves: the game servers, the live world that has been advancing every hour for hundreds of turns, the release pipeline, and the community. When something breaks at 3 a.m., one of us fixes it.
How the games are paid for
A House Divided is free to play in the browser and supported by players on Patreon, which covers the servers and keeps the world running. Grand Century is free while it is in development. Margin of Victory is free to start, and Supporter+ unlocks every campaign. Corporate Warfare is free to download while it is in development, with builds for Windows, Linux, and Android on the download page. None of the games has ads.
What we care about
- Systems over scripts. The best stories are the ones nobody wrote in advance.
- Legible depth. A simulation should let you trace a number back to the inputs that produced it.
- Worlds that persist. A game should have a memory, even when you close the tab.
- Honest status. If a build is playable, in development, or not ready, we say so.
Milestones
How the studio got here.
The first A House Divided
A browser political simulator begins as a personal project about elections, legislatures, and the people who run them.
Corporate Warfare, the first version
A multiplayer browser business game with a live stock market, bonds, boards, and hostile takeovers.
A House Divided Alpha
A rebuilt A House Divided opens to its first players.
Beta 1
A House Divided moves from Alpha to Beta, with player corporations and a stock market.
Beta 2
A fresh world for Beta 2. It goes on to run more than 1,000 consecutive hourly turns.
Margin of Victory open beta
An election campaign game in the browser, first released as Electioneer.
A House Divided 1.0 and Iteration 1
Founding elections and historical eras arrive with 1.0, and the first full iteration begins in 1953.
Grand Century becomes playable
A grand strategy game in the browser, starting in 1830.
A House Divided goes open source
The full game source is published on GitHub.
Singleplayer
A House Divided 1.6 runs the real game on your own machine, and AHDClient brings Singleplayer and Worldsim to desktop.
Grand Century 1.7
Seven historical starts from 1700 to 1945.
Iteration 2: the 1991 world
A House Divided resets to a new world at the end of the Cold War, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan open to players.
Corporate Warfare, reimagined
An offline economic strategy game reaches 1.7 with four scenarios, built on lessons from both the first version and A House Divided's economy.
A House Divided on iPhone
The iPhone app is submitted to the App Store.
Talk to us. The fastest way to reach the studio is the Discord, where most of the community lives. For press, partnerships, or anything that needs a paper trail, email contact@lakesidegames.net.