Southside Squeeze

Executive Summary

Southside Squeeze is a neighborhood business comedy created by Tom Baumhart. Run a lemonade stand through three summer days on a fictional South Side block. Buy ingredients, mix recipes, set prices, and negotiate with four recurring neighbors.

A deal can bring customers, storage, or a large order. It can also tie up your cash, stock, or time. Follow what happened in the ledger: money in the box is not the same as profit, and a deposit is a promise until you deliver.

Before You Play

You begin with $40 and an empty cooler. Visit the shop for supplies, then mix drinks at your stand. A house kit costs $6 and provides ingredients for ten cups; mixing is a separate action. Select Open for the morning when ready to sell.

Each day has two selling periods. You decide when to advance; there are no timed dialogue choices. Unsold drinks and unused ice expire at closing unless you arrange storage. A batch keeps the recipe you mixed.

Talk to Denise about storage, Reggie about competition, Dre about promotion, and Cam about a block-party order. Ask for the terms, make a counteroffer, accept, or walk away. Declining offers is a viable way to play. Reserve prepared house lemonade for Cam so regular customers cannot buy it. Undelivered cups may mean returning part of a deposit.

The game saves in this browser after decisions. Reloading preserves accepted deals and completed sales. A different browser or origin has a separate save. If saving is unavailable, the game offers session-only play. Starting a new run asks before replacing an existing save.

Controls and Accessibility

• Click or tap the labeled neighborhood markers and the buttons below the scene.
• Use Tab to reach controls, then Enter or Space to activate them. Escape closes a panel; focus returns to its marker.
• Use the ledger to compare earned sales, ingredient costs, waste, cash, and money still owed.
• Reduced-motion preferences are respected. The game is silent, and every game action is available through labeled HTML controls if the animated scene fails.
• Screen-reader speech, game pacing, humor, and educational outcomes remain matters for human evaluation.

How We Made This with Generative AI

Tom Baumhart is the creator. Mike Besso directed the design and implementation with Codex for Renaissance Solutions, choosing a click-first neighborhood business comedy and leaving room for a later walking interface. Generative AI assisted with code, dialogue, original SVG illustration, and verification. The game does not generate dialogue or outcomes with live AI during play.

Mike approved Game Room inclusion and supplied Tom's creator credit on September 20, 2026. This approves the catalog entry; it does not claim a measured playtime or an independently evaluated learning outcome. The original cast and artwork were made for this project. No Grand Theft Auto assets, logos, or music are used.

The Gory Details

A TypeScript simulation owns prices, ingredients, recipe batches, orders, relationships, and the ledger. The HTML interface and Phaser illustration share one controller, which keeps the option of future walking controls separate from business rules. Money uses integer cents; sales follow a deterministic seed. Browser-local saves are versioned and validated before resuming.

This is a simplified authored simulation, not a model of Chicago's real economy or a forecast of business results. Promotion adds prospects rather than guaranteed sales. Relationships record named events instead of a single morality score.

The owner repository packages this brief, its credits, the shared RS frame, the play application, and a health record under /gameroom/games/southside-squeeze/. The Game Room reads the package metadata to place it in Simulations and display Tom's credit. Packaging and local integration do not deploy the site.