You start in a rented apartment with a flip phone, a folding chair, and Alex — a man who will explain, patiently and at length, that this is just work.

It isn't. But he says it well.

Call Center Tycoon is an idle tycoon about building a fake call center from one desk to five floors. It's a comedy about crime as administration: shift rotas, monthly targets, performance reviews, a microwave nobody cleans. The joke is never the person on the other end of the phone.

This is satire. Everything in it is fictional and nothing in it works.

THE WORK

Leads come in. When one turns into a "mammoth" you have about five seconds to close it. The money lands dirty, and dirty money won't pay rent, salaries or a lawyer. You launder it through channels that trade speed against the cut they take: 45 percent and instant, or 22 percent if you can wait an hour.

THE STAFF

Warmers first, closers when you can afford them. Every candidate comes with a resume, a salary and a set of perks — chugs coffee by the liter, knows basic psychology, burns out easily. Some of them are police. Put them on the polygraph and watch the needle, or skip it and find out the hard way.

THE HEAT

Every closed deal raises heat. Cross the line and you get a visit. Pay the inspector, go out the window and take ninety seconds through the back alleys, or go to court and meet one of four judges: the greedy one, the theatrical one, the honest one, and the one who is simply tired. Prison is its own slow loop, with early release for the patient.

THE OFFICES

Apartment, loft, small office, mid office, corporation. Each one is a different room to sit in and a different set of problems. By the end you are delegating to your own middle managers, which is its own punchline.

AND THE GAME SCAMS YOU BACK

Fake emails, fake SMS, fake calls, fake popups — inside the interface, built to look like they belong there. Spot one and you get paid. Fall for one and you lose most of what you are holding.

SATIRE, NOT A MANUAL

Every scheme, brand, number and technique in this game is invented. There are no working scripts and no real methods, nothing you could take out of here and use on anyone. It is a cartoon of an industry you already read about in the news, told from the wrong side of the desk on purpose.

Partly because that is where the comedy is. Mostly because treating the people who do this as monsters, rather than as employees with targets, makes them harder to recognise when one of them calls you.

And if someone calls claiming to be your bank: hang up.

Free to play, with ads and optional purchases. Playable in English, German, Portuguese (Brazil), Ukrainian and Russian.