Blueprint: EV

Blueprint: EV is a single- and multiplayer strategy game about founding an electric vehicle company and running it through its first six fiscal years. You begin at the drafting table where every decision you make will be felt in quarters you haven’t reached yet.

Three binding decisions, then twenty-four quarters

The game opens with the founding: a five-act sequence in which you make three decisions that cannot be undone — market approach, starting vehicle type, and the management style you’ll lead with.

Each combination produces a different starting position. There are no "obviously correct" answers; there are trade-offs that play out over the next six years.

Then the quarters begin.

What a quarter looks like

Every quarter you work through a six-step decision sheet:

• Pricing & Marketing — set MSRP for each model, allocate consumer advertising and dealer support

• Production & Capacity — plan units per shift, authorise overtime, decide whether to expand the factory

• R&D — one action: facelift an existing attribute, or develop a new model in a new segment

• Market Intelligence — buy from a slate of nine market reports; some are worth their cost, some aren’t

• Blueprint Research — research own platform, battery chemistry, own factory and more to unlock new features

• Finances — manage your finances and loans

Then you submit. The market clears using a multinomial logit demand model, and you read the quarterly ledger: revenue, COGS, marketing, R&D, admin, depreciation, interest, tax, net profit, equity, cash. Briefs arrive. Internal events fire. Your phone buzzes once. The next quarter begins.

The arc of a run

A full game is twenty-four quarters across three phases:

• Act I (Q1–Q8): Market Entry. You are alone with three slow-moving incumbents. Establish a position, keep your covenants healthy, do not waste cash.

• Act II (Q9–Q16): Competitive Pivot. Imports arrive, margins compress, the R&D pipeline you started in Q3 begins to pay off — or doesn’t.

• Act III (Q17–Q24): Maturity. The market peaks and contracts. Survivors consolidate. If you’ve built well, an acquisition offer arrives at Q24.

Eight endings are possible. Tech Titan. Market Leader. IPO Candidate. Niche Champion. Legacy Survivor. Covenant Stress. Acqui-Hire. Forced Liquidation. Most players will not see all of them in their first ten runs.

Replayability

• 84 distinct opening positions

• Three rivals are drawn from four NPC archetypes

• Your management style determines who you face and rivals react to your moves

• A single run takes 90 to 120 minutes

• Multiplayer mode where you can play with up to 4 players or mix with NPC players

What it feels like

Blueprint: EV features an ASMR-kind of vibe and is the kind of game you play with a coffee, not a controller grip. The board is a navy blueprint where you sketch your decisions on. The cards on top of it are paper. There is no soundtrack telling you how to feel — just factory sounds humming in the background that you stop noticing until the numbers start to slip.

What it is not

• Not a tycoon game. There is no idle income.

• Not a roguelike. Runs are deterministic from your founding decisions; outcomes come from your decisions, not from a seed.

Steam features

• 30+ achievements across progression, performance, strategy, and management style

• Multiplayer

• Steam Cloud — continue any run on any machine

• Lifetime stats: games played, best score, peak market share, units sold

• Leaderboards: high score, best profit, units sold, peak share

• Steam Deck supported, optimised for handheld

• Languages: English, Simplified Chinese