← Second Chance

Back to what you know

The weed game where the meter grasses you up

The cellar, 6 Radworth Road

Denise at the job centre wants you there at half nine. The cellar under 6 Radworth Road has other ideas. Second Chance lets you go straight, and it lets you go back to what you know - and back to what you know starts downstairs, with a lamp, a fan and a meter that never stops going round.

The grow is a proper sim, not a progress bar. The lights run to a timer you set, and getting the cycle wrong costs you the crop. Hang the lamp too close and you scorch the lot. The temperature wanders about on its own from one day to the next, the humidity follows your fans, and switch them off at the wrong moment and mould gets in - past half the crop, it isn’t coming back. Take cuttings off your best plant and you’ve got more of it.

Then there’s the electric. Every lamp and every fan is metered at 26p a unit, with a 60p a day standing charge on top, and the bill comes out of your pocket every week whether the crop comes good or not. Draw more than 277 units in a week and somebody official starts wondering what you’re up to down there. Leave the curtains open at night and the whole street gets a look at the purple glow. Most drug games worry about the police. This one worries about the electricity board as well.

When it’s ready you’ll cut it, dry it, weigh it and bag it up, and a plant you’ve looked after properly will give you the best part of a kilo. Neglect it and you’ll get a fraction of that, if it lives.

Then it has to go somewhere. That’s the next thing being built: you’ll meet a supplier, sell to customers round the town, and find out how many people notice a lad with a lot of small bags.

Or don’t. The fly-tip round starts at six with Wozza in the council flatbed, the bins still need emptying, and Denise has a ruler with your name on it. You can do both, if you can keep your stories straight. It’s your second chance, and you’re the one who decides what to do with it.

The grow sim is built: the light cycle, the mould, the clones and the electric bill. Harvesting, bagging up and the dealing that follows are what I am building next, and this page gets the screenshots the day they are playable.

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