Kudos is a turn-based life-simulation game recently released by Cliff Harris, otherwise known as Positech Studios, in the UK. 
The game is available in download form only for the PC, with a limited-demo available to try for free.
When playing the game, you start out as a bachelor or bachelorette living in a small flat in Slough (a small suburb of London) on your twentieth birthday, with no qualifications and little in the way of job prospects. It is up to you to decide how to live your life until your thirtieth birthday.
Each turn is worth one in-game day, and on each turn you can go to work and then do one other activity of your choosing. How you choose to spend each day, over time, defines who your character becomes: Does she prefer to stay at home and watch TV all day, go to evening classes to improve job prospects, or hang out with buddies down at the local boozer?
There are also all manner of things to buy for yourself, most of which open up even more options to you. You can buy an instrument and become a famous band-member, or buy a cat to keep you de-stressed.
Kudos are used as an in-game point system. You are given Kudos whenever you do something that is socially apt, like meeting new people, strengthening relationships and discovering new experiences. However the significance of Kudos has been dumbed down, so that you aren't under pressure to earn them, thus you are very welcome to become addicted to video gaming (*cough*).
The game is very stat-oriented, and there are a few (unsurprising) surprises in store if you let your stats get too low (or too high). If your house gets too dirty you are increasing your risk to illness. If you are too unhappy your friends won't enjoy hanging out with you. Or if you drink too much alcohol over a short time you will become an alcoholic and need to go to AA meetings to get yourself fixed up.
The visual cues the game provides are well-implemented, too. As your relationships get stronger, the white line connecting you and a certain friend gets bolder; as your house gets increasingly dirty, specks and coffee stains appear on your screen; when there's a thunderstorm outside, the background is a beautifully animated deluge.
The game is backed up by a solid download system, which Cliff adds to frequently. These include anything from new artwork such as new friends to meet and new looks for your own character, or whole new branches of employment trees.
As it is at the moment, the game is a little unfulfilling when playing for long periods, somewhat due to the lack of goals apart from the ones you set yourself. The game is best enjoyed if you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the pace of the game. The music and art lend to this, and are definitely high points of the experience for me. After talking to Cliff I can tell that he has a lot of great ideas for where he wants to go with both this game, and new games in the future. I would not be surprised if new gameplay features turn up in future patches.
Overall the game is well worth a try, I know that some of you will love it. A full featured demo is available for download, limiting you to 28 turns.
Windows:
Download the demo
Get the full version
Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.
Cool! A bit of a sims clone, but cool.
sorry to be silly .. but slough is not a suburb or london. Slough is a horrible place
Actually, I don't think it's anything like the Sims. It's turn-based and while The Sims seems like an arcade-ish game, this one is definitely more simulation and is based more on gameplay than flashy graphics...
Slough is also the place where the original "Office" sitcom/comedy took place on the BBC.
I think the link with Slough is that Cliff Harris, during his past work with Lionhead and Elixir Studios, has spent a lot of time living around Slough. Also it is renowned in the UK for being a bit of a hole, a view obviously popularised by The Office.
There's a famous 1937 anti-suburban poem about Slough by John Betjeman:
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town --
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week for half-a-crown
For twenty years,
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears,
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
I think its kinda a no win situation, like if you take classes, you're not bored and you're skilled, but you don't have time to go out with friends, or enough money to do so. Its filled with stuff like that.
Hmm, sounds a little like life to me.
Well, I downloaded the demo on my computer, but it won't work. It says to go to the website and check for support or something. I went to the website, but I can't find anything related to support, and the FAQ was exceedingly non-helpful. So... I uninstalled it cuz I don't like adding stuff to my computer that can make it any slower than it already is, especially if said program doesn't even work. Anyone have an idea, because I might be persuaded to re-install it if I know it will work this time... I need a break from Chiko... I can't get past 87 points.
Hmm... that was weird. That last comment was mine, I signed in but for some reason it said I didn't sign in.
Er... okay... the comment that will hopefully be posted soon about not being able to play the game cuz I need "support" is mine.
The Sims felt "arcade-ish" to you? You must have played a different game than I did... I would actually argue that this games seems slightly more casual than The Sims given it's turn-based and you don't really have the spatial juggling to deal with. It does put a lot more detail in-your-face, which makes it feel more like a simulation (particularly with the info-dashboard game aesthetic), but I'd argue that the metrics/stats being tracked don't appear to be any more-or-less detailed than The Sims.
Ok so i downloaded the demo to try it 3 times, but the demo is jumpy and the mouses tail keeps making a trail that wont go away over the whole screen. What to do?
2 musts are get a dog asap and take kung fu or kick boxing to avoid getting mugged or your house broken into. Quickest way to lots of money is go the chef route.
dg
I have been playing this game for a little while now, and have not been able to figure out how to increase "people skills" after the purchase of the book. Any hints?
I think it's a great game. I tried the demo for about a day and decided I needed depserately to finish and see what happened to my character. Although the turn-based style kind of bores me a little, it's interesting to see what will happen next depending on what decision I make.
Anyway, great game.
Does anyone know how to increase the reasoning component of your character's IQ? I can build up logic, knowledge and problem-solving but reasoning stays low.
Janet--a couple ways to build up people skills, besides the book.
become a nightclub bouncer
become a management trainee in the restaurant biz.
Those are the only ones I have found so far.
Help! whenever I try to open it, it restarts my computer. Can somebody please post a solution?
THANX
I loved the poem, thanks!
Kudos is a nice original game but you get bored pretty fast when playing. That's too bad else it could be a big hit.
Heh, heh. Nice one, bardyblah.
How do I get my character to have cooking experience above 90%. She has had all of the cooking class, and is working as a sous chef. I cannot get her cooking experience above 90%. If anyone has any suggestions please help. Thanks.
Is Cliff going to write a kudos 2? maybe something in the 17th Century, so your career options would be: blacksmith, herbalist, astrologer, courtier (good pay but tendency to be beheaded) and so on?
Certainly not too shabby of a game. Not too shabby at all! With a few more changes it could be great!
hello everyone :-)
does anyone have any tips or tricks coz i have just started kinda and i always run out of money and friends
Thanks
HELLO
does somebody know how to raise cooking experience above 90%? help please!
I didn't have any problems getting my cooking experience above 90%. It went to 100% simply from going to work as a chef.
Is it possible to have a relationship move into more than just friends? ie. romantic?
I have a question: is it possible, if you build up enough relationsip, to get married in this game? I keep trying to make a fully red heart with another character but it looks like its going nowhere!
crisha,
Of all the chef jobs, sous chefs dont actually increase their cooking skills. You'll have to either buy some books or take a slightly poorer-paying job until you get up to 100%
Hey, does anyone know how to raise the IQ?
Okay...from someone who is definitely not computer-savvy, would anyone know why the game is 'flashing'every few seconds & when I turn the game off, it leaves a bit of the background mixed in with my desk-top. The desk-top corrects itself when I open another full size window.
Is this a resolution thing or possibly a 'capacity' type issue? All my other games play fine, including Sims.
Thanks!
I got bored after an hour and a half and started rewriting the job salaries. My character ended up with a waitress job that pays $50,000,000 per year
To increase IQ there are some books. Sudoku etc. Double click IQ bar so if your logic(IQ) is full you won't play sudoku more until it decreases. The best way is surfing puzzles and politics on laptop.
Does anyone know how to get performance experience thing for the drumming?
[Edit: If this is for Kudos Rock Legend, I suggest posting your comment on the appropriate review page...
https://jayisgames.com/archives/2007/07/kudos_rock_legend.php
-Jay]
I need help!! How do you boost your Knowledge (IQ)?
Do you know how to get piano performance? I bought a keyboard, but it only gave me keyboard skills...not piano. Does this sound like a glitch, or am I missing something? Thanks!
hmm...this was VERY boring for me, i had to wait for about a whole year(kudos time) to actually get together with this guy i had been going out with for about every week!!!
i tried to use the money trainer but i just dont know how its works anyone tried using it? please tell me how...
This game is fun but has one MAJOR glitch. Waiting stuff in restaurants has better salary (with tips) then most of other professions, including molecular biologist and astrophysicist. I had about 40-45 a day as waitress and about 23 as senior physicist.
To get any of the instrument "performance" skills, you have to work as a musician.
It works like:
Buy piano ->
Practice until you get some keyboard skill ->
Work as a low skill pianist (one that requires no piano performance skill) ->
Develop your performance skill simply by keeping that job until you have enough to get a better piano job.
The game has lots of performance/experience skills. You need to work as xxx to get xxx experience....
Good luck.
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Yeah~, you can develop marriage like relations. To get a "relation" started, you just need to get really good friends with someone of the opposite sex (same sex relations are also available if you change the options) - the best way to start this is to pay for them to go on a social event for them when they don't have the money.
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Has anyone found ways of increasing reason without the laptop?
I keep applying for jobs but never get one. I see a telephone at the bottom but can't answer it. I click on it but nothing happens. Help want a different job....
Help how do you get cooking experience? I tried nearly everything, but it doesnt work.
cannot seem to find my email to check for new jobs . can anyone help
To get cooking experience, take a job in the food industry, not as a waiter. The higher level chef type job you get, the more cooking experience you accumulate.
I am simply addicted to this game, I own it. It is like Sims in a way but, the Sims redone and this seems more realistic which I enjoy more, I'm obsessed with both The Sims and Kudos. I have gone through my "ten years" four times and I have gone through different Jobs, my Personal favorite was the Medical carrer, all you really have to do to have a good job is an IQ over 50% which you can do by buying the Game console (not my favorite) or playing chess, reading books like "Advance Math" and Logic books (Logic is IQ), and my personal favorite is crosswords it raises your IQ Fast and its fun. You'll need 100% Anatomy and 50% IQ and 75% Medical experiance to become a surgeon my favorite job, it was easy to get promoted and it wasn't stressful. To begin your medical experiance become a Doctor not the Nurse, Docter pays more and you'll need the exact same skills.
I was a Cosmetic Surgeon at Facelifts are us. Amazing pay and also to get promoted easily but the smart suit and stay sober (not drunk) for awhile after starting your job at first and after getting promoted it raises your chances.
Thanks, Hope it helped.
-Sabrina
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