Full House

It is one o'clock at Bukit Serai Food Centre. The queue at the chicken rice stall reaches the next pillar. A packet of tissues keeps a seat. Two strangers share a table, and neither looks up. At the back, a wok flares.

Bukit Serai is invented. So is everyone in it. The trade-offs are real.

What you do

You are the steward of this centre. The stalls are not yours. Each belongs to a hawker with a family, a temper and a few good years left – or a few decades.

Your job is to keep the centre full for twenty years. That is harder than it sounds.

• Rent keeps the books whole. Push it too far and the cooks leave.
• Cheap plates keep the diners. Too cheap, and nobody makes a living.
• An old master has no successor. A young stall needs a good first year.
• A dish becomes heritage on evidence – its regulars, a guide, a tasting panel – never on years alone.

No event in the game is there for show. Each one changes something you can name. Each week the centre's clerk writes you a note on what happened and what it did.

What is built Built

The first slice is built: one centre, ten stalls and one month, November 2026. It runs in a phone's browser as a private preview. The film above is recorded from that same game, from its own run.

• The living hall. Hawkers lift their shutters at dawn. Up to 80 people fill the hall at lunch, find their way down the aisles and sit down to eat. You can turn the view all the way round, and zoom from the whole hall to one counter.
• Denser seating. 17 seats a stall, 170 in all, on square, rectangular and round tables, packed as real halls are.
• Families' lives. Each hawker has a household with its own money, health and ties to the stall. A wedding, an illness or a lottery win moves the stall too.
• The famous stall. Every game has one stall that food hunters cross the island for. It lasts unless you steward it badly.
• Weather and the day. Dawn, lunch, dusk and night. Rain, haze and storms. A stall fire or a power cut shows in the hall, and anyone hurt is helped.
• The steward's score. Hawkers and diners each have a voice, with heritage and the books beside them. A centre left alone scores about 41 out of 100; good play, about 65. The top grade, Full House, is still being tuned.
• The world outside. Inflation is fitted to Singapore's record from 1981 to 2025. A Budget each February brings subsidies, fees and rules. Hard times come in about one year in five.
• Uncle James. From the second year, a man of that name may take an empty stall and fill it with robots. That is me. Ignore him, and he stays friendly.

Under the hall, the sim already runs the full twenty years. That is how the score is tuned.

What is planned Planned

None of this is built yet. It is the plan, in order.

• The interface. Tap any number and follow it to its cause. Three advisors to teach a new player. A stall list, so the month can be played without the 3D view.
• Sound. The roar of the wok, a room that swells with the crowd, and advisors who speak, with captions.
• Polish and release. Save and continue, a smooth first run, and tests on real phones.
• Later. Baked light for the hall, the full twenty years on screen, and an iOS build.

Play-testing opens after that. Sign up to hear when.

Why a game

Full House grew out of the Hawker Library, my collection of the evidence on what it costs to cook and sell a plate in Singapore. The Plan makes the policy case for keeping the trade alive. A game lets you feel it.

Every choice in Full House leans on the Library's evidence. Ingredients take 44.5% of the price of a median main dish. A broad S$1 rise in costs moves the price by about S$1.25. When costs fall, prices do not follow. Each number in the game is marked with its source.

I am not trying to tell you how to run a hawker centre. Try it when it opens, and tell me where I got it wrong.

– Uncle James