The full game is a whole year.
Four quarters, five calls a quarter, and three AI colleagues who argue about every one.
Pick your seat. Run the company for a year.
A consumer company, a market modelled on real ones and rivals that fight back. Test your brand strategy before you spend the budget.
Free, and no account needed. Built for leadership teams and classrooms too. New here? How to play.
18.9%Your share. You are Northlight.
This is the soft-drinks market. A thousand squares of what shoppers spend.
Halvard Cola cuts its price 3%.
Their wave takes five of your squares.
Your answer?
Then they answer you.
Halvard Cola answers with more advertising. Brisa cuts its price too.
That was one decision. A full game has twenty.
Four quarters. Five calls in each: strategy, price, retailers, budget and media.
Demo market, fictional companies, played by the game's engine.
Q1
Halvard Cola cuts its price. You answer.
“We end the year on 19.5%. That's the most share of any answer.”Priya, Chief Customer Officer
“It costs us €0.4m of profit against holding our price.”Daniel, Chief Financial Officer
−3%
Q2
Aluminium jumps. Every can you sell costs more to make.
+21%
Q3
A heatwave lifts the whole category. Theirs too.
+10%
Q4
A sugar levy lands, and investors reprice your shares.
€10.24
An example year. Rivals and the news change every game.
Soft drinks in Europe is one market.
Pick from seven categories, in six countries or a European reference market. Each starts with its own rivals and its own split of the shelf.
Snacks in the United Kingdom
Deals run hardest here: snacks promote 1.3 times as much as drinks, and UK retail is among the most promotion-heavy of the markets we model.
- 19.9%You
- 53.2%Crunchmore
- 26.9%Oakfield Kitchen
Beauty in Germany
Advertising runs at twice the intensity of drinks, and half the category sells through drugstores.
- 19.0%You
- 54.9%Velina
- 26.0%Maison Ardelle
Coffee in France
Shoppers are the most price-sensitive of any category, and French law caps food promotions at 34% off.
- 26.8%You
- 46.5%Hartvale
- 26.7%Tallowmere Roasters
Oral care in the United States
Shoppers barely move on price, and online stores and marketplaces carry twice the weight they have in the European reference.
- 16.6%You
- 56.1%Quillon
- 27.3%Calmora
Energy drinks in Switzerland
Shelf prices sit 45% above the euro area, and interest rates are zero, so investors pay more for the same growth.
- 14.6%You
- 54.8%Altivane
- 30.6%Rookfang
Household care in India
Prices are about a third of Europe's, most sales go through kirana stores, and the leader starts with two thirds of the shelf.
- 15.5%You
- 67.8%Clarenza
- 16.7%Fernhollow
Seven categories. Seven markets.
The engine was calibrated on soft drinks. Every other market changes what research says differs: how hard shoppers react to price, when demand peaks, how deep deals run, where people shop, the price level and interest rates.
Starting splits from the engine, world 640. Money is shown in euros everywhere so scores compare.
What powers the game: 19 models, five of them shown
For the Chief Customer Officer
Raise your price and some shoppers walk away.
Every shelf price is read against the price shoppers expect. In soft drinks, 10% up costs about 16% of volume.
Shopper choice and price response. Price elasticity −1.77, log-log regression on 48 simulated market-years.
For the Chief Marketing Officer
Advertising keeps working after you stop.
Brand advertising builds a memory that fades slowly. A promotion is gone by next quarter.
Advertising memory and saturation. Brand carry-over 0.85 a quarter, promotions 0.30; returns fall as spend rises, measured at ten spend levels in nine simulated markets.
For the Chief Executive and the CFO
Investors pay for growth, and rates set the price of it.
Your share price follows earnings, valued at a multiple that rises with sales growth and falls as interest rates climb.
Share-price valuation. Fair earnings multiple = (1 + 1.5 × growth) ÷ (policy rate + 4.5%), held between 8 and 30.
For the Chief Financial Officer
Every call lands in the accounts.
Northlight's first year after undercutting: €108.8m of net sales becomes €6.3m of profit and €10.2m of cash from operations.
Company accounts. Quarterly P&L, balance sheet and cash; tax 25%, depreciation 2.5% of fixed assets a quarter, interest at the policy rate plus a credit spread.
For everyone at the table
Rivals answer, the way real ones do.
Attack a rival with a deal and most do nothing; three in ten hit back with the same weapon. The ones that act play out their options before they move.
Rival response. Odds from Steenkamp, Nijs, Hanssens & Dekimpe (2005), 400+ categories; a bounded best response with a belief about the kind of player you are.
And underneath
14 more, all built from the ground up.
Each runs inside the engine or on its results, every quarter of every game.
- Deals and pantry loading
- Retail distribution and stock
- Digital shelf and AI answers
- Creative quality and wear-out
- News-to-shock engine
- Live news desk
- Counterfactual attribution
- Mix regression
- Bayesian mix model
- Brand-equity tracker
- Budget optimiser
- AI colleagues
- Risk across worlds
- People risk
Back-tested.
We hid a return. Fitted blind, the model found the same figure:€0.70
Each test plants a return in a simulated market and keeps it from the model. Here its range, €0.46 to €1.01, holds the hidden answer.
51 of 60 blind tests found the hidden answer inside the model's range.
8%
On 13 unseen weeks in eight simulated markets, the model's typical error is 8%. It beats carrying last quarter forward (15%) in 31 of 32 tests. A same-weeks-last-year forecast (7%) still beats it more often than not.
A Bayesian mix model fitted blind on two years of weekly sales; 38 published marketing findings checked against the engine. All on simulated markets, where the right answer is known. Read every check
10 kinds of shock, from today's headlines.
Costs, demand, interest rates, rules, retailers and channels. The news desk reads the day's press for your category and country.
“Aluminium up 21% as smelters curb output on energy costs”
Can costs +21%“Central bank lifts rates by a quarter point to cool inflation”
Rates +0.25 points“Sunshine boost: category volumes up 10% in the heat”
Demand +10%“Government confirms a levy on sugary drinks from next quarter”
Unit costs +9%The desk reads GDELT for your category and country every six hours and sizes each headline: a typical size and a cap set from research, commodity moves capped at 40%, at most two shocks a quarter. The headlines here are examples from the game's library of 15 events, which stands in when the feed is down.
49 markets.
7 categories in 7 markets, each with its own price sensitivity, seasons, deal rules, channels, price level and interest rates.
Three ways to play.
Solo
On your own
Pick a seat, a category and a market, and run the year at your own pace. Or take today's challenge, the same world for everyone, and see how your call compares.
Team against team
With your team
Decide together and take on other teams in the same market. Every quarter, both sides see the share price move.
Class
With your class
Open a class and share one code. Students join without an account, and the class compares years at the end.
Make your first move.
Pick any of the four seats and run a year. Free, no account, and your games stay in your browser.
Take your seat