A SMALL LIFE.
A BIG ECONOMY.

HOW TO PLAY · QUICK START

1. Load the world, then meet your person. Wait for the government data status in the life dashboard. If the service is unavailable, you can explicitly choose example mode. Press RANDOM to draw a difficulty and character and start immediately. Or press CHOOSE, pick Easy (upper class), Medium (middle class), or Hard (lower class), then BEGIN. Your person has their own job, household, and starting budget. The clock begins on RANDOM or BEGIN.
2. Adapt before bills arrive. Each month lasts 15 seconds. EAT, WORK, and REST open choices on the game screen. The clock keeps running while you choose. Each option previews its effect on food, energy, and stress. Your latest selected plans apply when the countdown reaches zero. Current needs carry forward; changing a plan does not instantly refill them.
3. See what fits. On a large screen, your character is on the left, the clock and needs are in the center, and monthly events, budget details, economy controls, and sources are on the right. On a phone these panels stack below the controls. Open WHERE THE MONEY GOES for bills. Inventory items show what is affordable after bills; tapping one explains it without buying it.
4. Change the conditions. Open WHAT IF THE ECONOMY CHANGES? to add hypothetical changes to the reported conditions. LIFE HAPPENS adds one surprise per month. A clearly labeled simulated event also arrives automatically each month after the first. It can add a bill or change food, energy, and stress. These events are fictional, not new BLS releases. Try raising utilities and watch your forecast change.
5. Keep your life going. Income and bills settle automatically once every 15 seconds, then the next month begins. Reserves, unpaid bills, food, energy, and stress carry forward. Repeated overtime drains the person. Batch cooking builds a food buffer but takes energy. STAY IN restores energy, while FREE TIME OUT reduces stress without spending money. Use PAUSE to take a breather or adjust your plans; RESUME continues the remaining time. Starting another month does not call BLS again.

Finding your way: Top left restarts your life. Top right opens this guide. The clock pauses while this guide is open or the browser tab is hidden. BACK TO GAME continues your remaining time unless you paused it yourself. Reloading starts over. Restart gives your next life a fresh 15-second month.

The character and dollar budgets are simulated. The connected mode applies real published changes to those budgets. A month of gameplay does not trigger another API request or another annual price increase.

WHY THE SAME CHANGE FEELS DIFFERENT

A rent increase reaches a renter at the next simulated renewal. A fixed mortgage keeps the same principal-and-interest payment, while an adjustable mortgage can change at its reset date. Owners still face changing taxes and insurance. Utility increases depend on the character's starting bill. A pay cut, childcare bill, or unexpected expense leaves less room for everything else.

HOW THE APP WAS BUILT

The design grew from a virtual-pet idea into a human life simulation. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript draw the handheld and run its rules. The pixel art was AI-generated during the design process. A clipped copy of the existing character gently breathes during active play; the room stays still. Animation stops when paused and respects reduced-motion preferences. A Cloudflare server function fetches a fixed set of public BLS series; your browser uses their changes to model the household. No character information is sent to BLS. Your current life stays intact while you visit this page; restarting clears the life and keeps the session’s economic snapshot.

THE GOVERNMENT DATA

The game requests ten public time series from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sources, values, reporting months, retrieval time, and any preliminary-data notes appear in Data & sources in the life dashboard.

BLS · Consumer Price Index ↗MONTHLY

Nine indexes cover all items, groceries, rent, fuels and utilities, transportation, medical care, day care, dining, and gasoline. They describe the U.S. city average for urban consumers; they are not local prices or dollar quotes.

BLS · Current Employment Statistics ↗MONTHLY

Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls. This is a gross national benchmark; applying its movement to fictional after-tax income is a game assumption, not an estimate of anyone’s actual paycheck.

All ten series are not seasonally adjusted. The game selects the newest month with both a current and year-earlier observation for every series. A source that publishes sooner can have a newer value than the shared month used in the game.

THE SIMULATION RULES

All characters and class groupings are fictional examples, not official class thresholds. Fifteen seconds of active play equals one simulated month; this does not accelerate the publication of government data. Reference dollar budgets are invented. Each reference amount is multiplied by its category’s published current/prior-year ratio once. Household choices and extra what-if changes then adjust those amounts. This asks how the reported annual changes would affect a sample budget; it does not recreate an actual household or its local cost of living. A refreshed release replaces the annual comparison used for future forecasts, not a cumulative price history.

Groceries, utilities, transport, health, childcare, and dining each use their own price index. Personal essentials, holiday goals, and owner tax / insurance use all-items CPI as a broad proxy. Fixed mortgage principal, debt minimums, starting savings, and the second-home savings goal do not inflate. Gasoline only changes the extra fuel item, avoiding a second increase in the transport budget. Current bills are paid before overdue bills; anything left becomes a reserve. Unfunded costs accumulate as unpaid bills. Inventory shows illustrative purchases or savings goals that fit after planned bills. Checking an item does not buy it. Food, energy, and stress are persistent game meters from 0 to 100, not health predictions. All people start at food 72, energy 72, and stress 24. The food meter represents a buffer for meal preparation and affordability, not a nutrition rating. Work, food and rest plans, financial strain, and fictional monthly challenges change the meters at settlement. Staying in for several months adds a capped stress penalty; free time out breaks that streak. The interface shows the next change before the month ends.

Starting rent includes the loaded rent-index change, then holds until renewal. Example leases renew in month 2 and then yearly. The adjustable mortgage first resets in month 3, with a two-point adjustment cap and a five-point lifetime cap; these are invented contract terms. Mortgage payments use the remaining principal and term. Mortgage rates, life events, monthly challenges, and contract terms are invented scenarios. Monthly challenges expire after one settlement. They never change the official BLS factors. A utility-use event adds 25% of the modeled utility bill, a grocery event adds 12% of the selected grocery budget, and a repair event adds $90; these appear separately in the budget. Overtime needs energy of at least 30, food of at least 25, and stress below 80. If a person drops below those limits, the next month defaults to usual hours. Energy or food below 20, or stress at 85 or above, reduces modeled pay by 10% until the next month starts with recovered meters. These cutoffs and effects are invented game rules, not employment or medical forecasts. Debt minimums are fixed examples; interest fees on overdue bills, benefits, investments, eviction, and foreclosure are not simulated. Displayed dollars are rounded.

Learn about fixed and adjustable mortgages from the CFPB ↗

WHAT “CONNECTED” MEANS

A fresh request for published government data when the page loads, plus a manual refresh button. BLS publishes these figures monthly, not second by second. There is no background polling. Simulated months reuse the current levels; they do not repeatedly compound an annual rate. If a refresh fails, the previous session snapshot remains visibly dated. Example mode is always labeled.

DATA USE & PRIVACY

Economic responses and your fictional life are held in working memory only. The app writes no economic data or gameplay to a database, browser storage, cookies, or a service worker. Reloading starts a fresh session. Economic API responses request no caching. Hosting and data providers may retain their own network or operational records; the app does not control those.

This independent educational project uses BLS public data with source attribution. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. government. BLS API terms ↗ · BLS reuse guidance ↗

BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.

Icons: Lucide license. Font: VT323, SIL Open Font License. Font and icons are bundled with the app.