How to Win: Season One

How to Win: Season One

Hidden Track · 2021 · Story Rich, Political, Dark Comedy, Choices Matter, Choose Your Own Adventure

PC
6 user reviews83% · 6
This game is free to play. Get it on Steam →

Screenshots

About How to Win: Season One

How to Win is an anarchic adventure/gaming experiment where anyone who plays can decide the rules of the world, and which direction our story goes.

In the summer of 2020, multi-award winning interactive theatre company Hidden Track teamed with indie game dev Cael O'Sullivan for their first ever gaming experiment. We asked our players what the rules of our game should be, and if they could imagine a world in which everyone could win.
We were given hundreds of suggestions and ideas, and we put the best ones to a public vote.

Whatever they decided, WHATEVER it was, that was the world we made next.

Winning suggestions included:
  • Make the Most Money in the World
  • Invest all our money in a potato-based pyramid scheme.
  • Slay the Billionaire Dragon
  • Brand new character: The Great Elephant of the North
  • Brand new character: A monster drawn by a 5-year-old
  • RAISE THE KRAKEN
  • stealth ninja style
  • Take over the media and spread propaganda.
  • Run away and join the circus.

The result was… chaos.

Now, all 5 chapters of Season 1 have been compiled and remastered on Steam, along with new functionality and brand new content.
Explore the world we made, find out how it ended, then tell us what to do different.
Whatever you decide, that’s what happens next.

Commissioned by Harrogate Theatres and HOME, Manchester.

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

Not recommended Dec 11, 2021
Absolutely terrible, everything in the game, the dialogue, and how everything feels. it's all forced, feels like the author made everything feel related to real life events and made all the votes just cause they couldn't come up with any actual way to play. Glad it's free though.
3 found this helpful
Recommended Nov 15, 2025
Игра 'How to Win: Season One' – это очень забавная и ироничная point-and-click адвенчура. Визуальный стиль намеренно прост, но это добавляет шарма. Юмор – главное достоинство игры. Абсурдные ситуации и остроумные диалоги заставляют постоянно улыбаться. Геймплей не сложный, головоломки довольно прямолинейны, но это не портит впечатление, так как акцент сделан на нарратив и юмор. Игра проходится довольно быстро, но за это время успевает оставить приятное впечатление. 'How to Win: Season One' высмеивает клише видеоигр и предлагает нестандартный подход к повествованию. Если вы ищете игру, чтобы расслабиться и посмеяться, то это хороший выбор. Рекомендую тем, кто ценит юмор в играх и не ждет от геймплея особой хардкорности. Хочу продолжения!
Not recommended Mar 17, 2025
[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b] This game contains no meaningful single player content. There are no available servers and no player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote] This dead online adversarial multioplayer e-book (ugh, what a terrible idea) failed badly due to a weak premise implemented badly... low quality presentation did nothing to help the terribly weak premise of a multiplayer "make your own rules" CYOA experience. How to Win: Season One is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? [i]Almost every PvP/multiplayer exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so. Competition amongst multiplayer centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost. Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a…
Recommended Jun 27, 2024
Such a charming game. I found out about this game years late from replaying the psychological horror SHUT IN, and this experience retains that one's humor. Which I appreciate, because I seriously couldn't stop laughing the entire game.. except for when the insane, zany plot twists and strangely emotional beats slap you across the face. A fun-tabulous (still feel a little bad I was rooting for the opportunity throw him in with the Sharktigers, sorry Funbo) game, certainly, with likable characters and AMAZING dialogue peppering the honestly still-relevant issues plaguing our world today. Neat takes on different perspectives and political stances; I found myself sucked in to the story and characters at 4 am, too absorbed in this wacky world and these ideas and adventures to go to bed. It felt like a game that knows the rules and how to break them. I don't add many games to my favorites list on Steam... but this one was exceptionally fun and imaginative, and I'm sure I'll be replaying it in the near future. Now, the real question is, if life had an objective, what would it be? How would *I* win the game of life?... I'm not sure, but I'm definitely not getting flung into a volcano any…
Recommended Mar 24, 2023
[h1]Before I played How to Win, I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]
Recommended Mar 6, 2022
I'm not sure if this is meant to be a serious critique of the underlying tenets of capitalism, a la Elizabeth Magie's [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord's_Game]Monopoly[/url], or just memes. Gameplay-wise, it's mainly a renpy-style VN. I think [url=https://ncase.me/projects/]ncase's educational games's[/url] are better done overall, but there's definitely plenty of room for more content in this space. The second round was kind of dreary; it spent more time making fun of accents than pointing out that Thatcher systematically dismantled northern industry (because they weren't gonna vote for her anyway, so caedite eos), and New Labour hasn't exactly done anything to redress the situation.

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