Metal Manager

It's January 1970. You have a battered guitar, four hundred dollars and nobody who'll play with you. Forty years from now they might be chanting your name back at you across an arena — or your gear might be sold off to cover the debts.

Louder Than Gods is a month-by-month career sim about building the greatest metal band of all time. Write songs in the rehearsal room, take the best eight into the studio and put out a record. Recruit musicians, buy amps and vans and pyrotechnics, book everything from sticky-floored club runs to six-month world tours, and decide whether to stay independent or sign the contract that hands away two thirds of everything you'll ever earn.

The trick is that metal never sits still. Seventeen styles rise and fall across four decades, from blues rock in 1970 to djent in 2007 — each one has to be learned before you can write in it, and each one has a moment when the world is listening. Release a record while your sound is peaking and it pays for the next five years. Release it a decade late and nobody buys it. Read the trend board, spend your money at the right time, and evolve before the crowd moves on without you.

Along the way there are decisions that stick: the advert money that buys a studio but costs you the fanzines, the arena you might not be able to fill, the bandmate who wants a bigger cut. Every career ends with a verdict on what you built.