Prime Time

Overview

Prime Time is a satirical idle game where you play as Geoff Bozo, a wannabe tech mogul on the rise. You start with a book shop and end up running a trillion-dollar megacorp.

The game borrows from classics like AdVenture Capitalist and Cookie Clicker, but with a darker edge. You’ll hire cheap labour, crush unions, launch delivery drones, and generally exploit everything in sight - all in the name of efficiency.

Development Story

I made Prime Time for the Fxck Capitalism Jam in 2025. The goal was to make something creative that also fought back against capitalism using satire, criticism, rage, or anything else that showed how detrimental it is to our society. My choice was to make Prime Time - a parody of the way massive companies grow and operate.

The first thing I built was the idle loop: automated revenue ticking up in the background. After that, I layered in upgrades, unlocks, and the darkly humorous text.

The hardest part was balancing progression. Idle games live or die on pacing. Too fast and it’s boring, too slow and it’s a grind. I wanted players to actually finish this one in a reasonable time, so I tuned it until the flow felt right. The satire mattered more than the mechanics, but the mechanics still had to hold together.

Design Notes

I kept the graphics minimal and functional, almost like old corporate software. It fits the theme, and it echoes the way Cookie Clicker uses simple visuals as a backdrop.

One little touch I enjoyed adding was the tiny Geoff Bozo character in the top left corner of the screen. He reacts to your progress and choices, which gives the game a bit more personality.

Difficulty-wise, most of the balancing came down to me just playtesting repeatedly. Buy this, tweak that, see how long it takes to reach the end.

If I had more time, I’d add more mechanics so it wasn’t just “buy thing, upgrade thing.” A bit more variety would give it longer legs.

Technical Notes

Prime Time doesn’t push BeepMini too hard. It uses:

• Standard graphics and input handling.
• Generated music and sound effects for background noise.
• The state system to save progress.
• Browser sleep detection to pause when the tab isn’t active, and calculate progress when the tab is reactivated.

Since the game is mostly menus and UI, I didn’t need advanced features. It’s light, snappy, and focused.

Player Tips

Best advice for playing the game? Buy everything. Don’t hoard money. Most upgrades pay off quickly, even if a few have negative effects at first. Some of those “bad” choices lead to much stronger upgrades later.

There aren’t many hidden secrets, but if you make enough money, you’ll unlock a fun little textmode scene of Geoff Bozo escaping Earth in a spaceship (made with the Textmode graphics editor).

Personally, I like letting the game idle in the background while I do other things, checking in every so often to buy upgrades. Once it’s rolling, it only takes an hour or two to reach the end.

Reflection

Making Prime Time taught me just how tricky it is to balance an idle game. It’s a constant struggle to keep the pace interesting without burning players out.

I enjoy playing idle games, but I don’t think I have the patience to design a bigger one. Balancing something on the scale of Cookie Clicker would be a whole other beast.

That said, I’m happy with Prime Time as a short, funny project. If you’re curious about the inner workings, the source code is up for sale on itch.io. If you want to see the satirical messages (upgrades, and news ticker) you can check out the blog post I made about it here.