The big picture Everyone
Lease on Life is one college town played from two altitudes. Story Mode asks what one renter should do; City Mode asks why that was so hard. Threaded through both is the Reading Room — nine short, cited summaries of real housing research — and a metacognitive arc: you answer a few honest questions before you play, and the game hands those answers back to you at the end and asks what changed.
The Housing Odyssey · 45–75 min
Walk the town through two chapters of one renter's life. Twelve encounters move three meters — money, stress, community — that cannot all stay green. Ends with an exportable journal.
Maple Falls: The Ten-Year Plan · 30–90 min
Run the whole map as planning director while enrollment climbs every September. Ends with a review-board report card and an exportable ten-year report.
The learning goal, stated plainly
Not "learn ten housing terms" (though that happens). The goal is metacognition: noticing what housing costs are already doing to you — your budget, your stress, your choices — and to your community, and being able to say how your thinking changed and what changed it. Every layer of the game (baseline questions, readings, reflections, the final echo) exists to make that visible on paper.
Recommended order: Story Mode first, City Mode second. Story Mode builds sympathy for the individual; City Mode reveals the system that individual was inside. The final City report explicitly asks students to connect the two.
Students: how to play Students
Controls in 20 seconds
- W A S D or arrows — walk · drag — look around
- E or click a glowing beacon — start an encounter
- J journal · L Reading Room · M map
- Hold Shift to jog. Beacons pulse red; the design competition beacon is teal.
- Click a palette item, then click a tile to build. Drag to paint roads.
- R rotate · X bulldoze · space pause · scroll to zoom
- Buildings only work with a road on an adjacent tile — cones mark orphans.
- 📚 Library, 📓 Notebook, 📈 Trends, 🎯 Goals live in the bottom bar. Time pauses while any panel is open — reading is never a cost.
The three habits that make the game worth your time
Answer the opening questions honestly
Both games start by asking about you — your real housing share, a prediction about your own play, a guess about who gets hurt first. Nobody grades these and nothing leaves your browser. But the endgame literally quotes them back to you, and vague answers give end-of-game-you nothing to work with. Write like you're leaving a note for a future self, because you are.
Take the pauses
When a "📚 Reading unlocked — pause & go deeper" button appears after an encounter, that reading was chosen because it's the real research behind the moment you just played. Two minutes there beats ten minutes later. Each reading ends with two prompts — You and Your community — and a notes box. One honest sentence in that box is worth more than a paragraph of summary.
Reflect in specifics, not vibes
Every encounter ends with a reflection question. The difference between a thin note and a strong one is specifics from your actual life — a number, a street, a person, a decision. See the annotated examples in the walkthrough below.
What "good" looks like: one encounter, annotated
Here is a real Chapter 1 encounter and two versions of a student response to its reflection question.
🏛 The Housing Office — Campus Housing & Residence Life
A line snakes out the door. Room selection for next year opens today, and the standard double is now $4,800 per semester. The advisor slides three options across the desk.
Reflection: “Which of the three costs — money, stress, or belonging — was easiest for you to spend? Why that one?”
Money, because I wanted to save money and the house was cheaper.Why it's thin: it restates the choice instead of examining it, and "easiest to spend" was about the cost you sacrificed, not the one you protected. There's no why, and nothing from the student's real life.
Honestly, stress was easiest to spend — I told myself I could "handle" the deposit, the summer sublet, the utilities-splitting. I do the same thing in real life: I took a 6pm–midnight shift this semester because the money is visible and the exhaustion isn't. The game just made me watch the stress meter actually move.Why it's strong: names the cost honestly, connects it to a real current decision, and notices a pattern in their own thinking — which is the metacognitive move the whole game is fishing for.
Before you leave the machine
Export your work. Story Mode: open the Journal (J) → Export journal (HTML). City Mode: the Year-10 report screen (or Notebook → Export report so far anytime). Saves live in that browser on that computer — a lab machine may wipe them, so export before you log out. The exported file opens in any browser and prints cleanly; submit it however your teacher asks.
Exemplar walkthrough: Story Mode Everyone
A guided tour of one complete play, with commentary on what each stage is for. Teachers: this doubles as your preview if you only have fifteen minutes to vet the game. Students: this shows the shape of the journey without spoiling your choices — encounters have three defensible options each, and the game never announces a "correct" one.
Reader's Prologue (3–5 min)
Before Chapter 1, the game opens Matthew Desmond's Evicted — the "rent eats first" argument — and asks three baseline questions: your real housing share, a prediction about which meter you'll protect, and one choice housing costs have already made for you. Do not rush this. The finale is built out of these answers.
Chapter 1 — Sophomore Year (15–25 min)
Six beacons across campus and town: the housing office, a roommate conflict, a too-good-to-be-true listing, a porch conversation with a thirty-year resident, the bursar's real-cost screen, and the job board. Each choice moves money, stress, and community — and most unlock an insight card. Insights unlock readings: choosing the commute option at the Housing Office, for instance, unlocks CNT's Housing + Transportation research, with a pause & go deeper button right in the encounter. The porch conversation on Maple Street unlocks Smith's studentification research — for many students the emotional center of the chapter.
Chapter break — a reading interlude (5 min)
The year ends with your meters on screen and one reading placed where it lands hardest: the #RealCollege data on student housing insecurity, after you've just lived a (fictional) student housing year. Two written reflections here carry into the export. In class, this is a natural stopping point for session one.
Chapter 2 — After Graduation (15–25 min)
Two years later, same town, warmer light: an offer letter and a budget decision, the application gauntlet (screening, co-signers), move-in day documentation, a city-council public comment night, a 12% renewal letter, and a five-years-out conversation with classmates. The public-comment encounter pairs with Neighborhood Defenders; the renewal letter is where the 30% rule stops being vocabulary.
The Corner Lot design competition (10 min)
Near the chapter's end, a teal beacon opens a $12M build challenge on a vacant lot: homes, affordability, community, and green space, scored live. A jury verdict names what your design underdelivered — "every design is also a decision about who it leaves out." Watch students discover they've become the planner they were arguing with all game.
Finale: the letter from before the game (5–10 min)
The epilogue assigns a profile (Rooted Neighbor, Quiet Strategist, Survivor, Balancer — none is the "win"), then shows the baseline answers verbatim under the heading "A letter from before the game" and asks: what did the game confirm, what did it complicate, what would you tell the person who wrote this? That answer is usually the best paragraph in the export. Then: Export journal.
An exemplar "echo" answer (shared with student permission-style framing)
Baseline prediction: "Money, probably. I'm careful with money." — Final echo response:
"Past-me said I'd protect money, and I did — I ended with savings and a community meter of 25. The game complicated the word 'careful.' I wasn't careful, I was scared, and the porch lady on Maple Street is the first time I thought about what my carefulness costs other people. I'd tell the person who wrote that baseline: you're not budgeting, you're hiding, and it works right up until you need a neighbor."
Exemplar walkthrough: City Mode Everyone
City Mode has no single path — that's the point — but here is one instructive ten-year run of the Enrollment Boom scenario, played the way a thoughtful first-timer might, mistakes included. The mistakes are where the learning is.
The Director's Packet (5 min)
Choosing a scenario opens your predecessor's folder: three flagged readings (Desmond, Neighborhood Defenders, Schuetz's Fixer-Upper) and one baseline question — who gets hurt first when rent rises, and who profits? Write a real guess; Year 10 will quote it. Then the map loads: a small starter town, $20M, and a university that grows every September whether you're ready or not.
Years 1–2: the honeymoon (and the first mistake)
Our exemplar player does what almost everyone does: builds what looks nice — shops, a park, a few cottages. The first September arrives, enrollment jumps, overflow students start outbidding families for homes, and rent creeps from $900 toward $1,100. The advisor's zero-vacancy warning fires: under 3% vacancy, landlords can raise rents without losing anyone. Lesson one, learned the visible way: vacancy is renters' leverage, and pretty isn't supply.
Years 3–5: targeted supply
Course correction: a dorm near campus (each bed removes a whole student from the general market — the highest-leverage move a college town has) and apartment blocks along a new road. Rent growth flattens. At Year 3 the inclusionary zoning council vote arrives with real trade-offs either way — adopt it and construction costs rise while pressure eases; reject it and the market decides. There is no free answer, and the Notebook records which one you chose and why.
Years 5–8: events with teeth
Somewhere in the middle years the market punches back: an investor bulk-buy, a short-term-rental exodus, a 220-unit tower proposal that splits the town, or a river flood that turns real tiles to rubble you must clear and rebuild. Each event teaches a concept and demands a decision; several ask for a written reflection on the spot. The midterm briefing at Year 5 says open your Trends panel and read your own city — the rent line's September stair-steps are enrollment arriving; whatever you fix now pays off around Year 7, because cities are slow experiments.
Years 9–10: the review board and the echo
At Year 10 the board grades affordability, supply, town–gown relations, livability, and budget against the scenario's goals — our exemplar run lands 3 of 4, having let cost-burden slip during the honeymoon years. Above the reflection boxes sits your Year-1 baseline guess, and the first question asks: who actually got hurt first, and was your instinct right? Our player's honest answer: "I guessed renters near campus, and I was right — but I didn't predict that I would be the one hurting them, for two whole years, by building parks instead of homes." Export the full report (it includes the trend chart and every notebook entry).
Three other runs worth assigning
- Priced Out — start behind, rent already $1,400. Ask: is it harder to prevent a crisis or reverse one? (Pairs with Schuetz's two-problems diagnosis.)
- Green Growth — a flush budget and a livability mandate. Ask: who gets priced out of a town that's "green and lovely"?
- Sandbox with a hypothesis — have students write a one-sentence policy hypothesis ("streamlined permits will lower rent faster than tenant protections"), test it for ten sandbox years, and report against their prediction.
Teachers: lesson formats Teachers
Everything runs in a browser with no accounts; students' work exports as an HTML file they submit like any document. Below are three tested shapes, from one class period to a two-week unit. Times assume ~50-minute periods.
Format A — One period: Story Mode, Chapter 1 only
Format B — Two periods + homework: the full pairing
Format C — Unit spine (1–2 weeks)
Use the games as the experiential spine and the Reading Room as the syllabus: one reading per night (the cards cite the real sources — assign the originals where your course level warrants), Story Mode in week one, City Mode in week two, and a capstone essay prompt drawn from the exports:
- "Housing outcomes in this game depended on money, knowledge, relationships, and showing up. Rank those four for your real life and defend the ranking with one moment from each mode."
- "Using your Year-1 guess and your Year-10 answer, describe how your model of 'who gets hurt first' changed — and which reading, encounter, or event changed it."
- "Attend or watch one real public meeting where housing is discussed (many councils stream them). Compare who spoke there to who spoke in the game's public-comment night and to Einstein, Glick & Palmer's data."
Facilitation notes
- This topic is live for some students. Housing insecurity is present in most classrooms (that's what the #RealCollege interlude documents). Keep baseline answers and journal reflections private by default — grade for engagement and specificity, never for disclosure, and say so out loud before anyone starts typing.
- Don't reveal the echo. The finale quoting the baseline back lands hardest as a surprise. Frame the opening questions as "the game needs this later" and leave it.
- There are no correct choices, only defended ones. Every encounter option is defensible; the epilogue profiles are portraits, not grades. If students ask "what's the best ending?", the honest answer — "the one you can defend" — is also the lesson.
- Pairs beat solo for discussion; solo beats pairs for the metacognitive writing. A good hybrid: pairs at the keyboard, individual reflection boxes ("driver types the choice, both write their own notes on paper, driver picks one to enter").
- Preview the disaster events if your City session is short — fires and floods are recoverable but eat 10 minutes; the pause button is always available and panels freeze time.
Assessment & rubric Teachers
The two exports are the assessable artifacts, and they're structured for skimming: choices made, reflections written, readings annotated, and the before/after echo. This rubric grades the thinking, not the outcomes — a bankrupt city with a sharp report card outranks a thriving one with empty boxes.
| Criterion | Emerging (1) | Developing (2) | Proficient (3) | Advanced (4) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reflection specificity encounter & event notes |
Boxes blank or restate the choice ("I picked the dorm"). | Gives a reason, but generic — could have been written without playing. | Names the trade-off made and a concrete why, referencing game specifics. | Connects the trade-off to a real decision, number, or pattern in the student's own life. |
| Reading connections Reading Room / Library notes |
No readings opened, or notes summarize the card. | Answers a connect prompt in the abstract ("commutes cost money"). | Answers the You or Your community prompt with a specific, local observation. | Puts a reading in tension with their own experience or with another reading, and says so. |
| Systems thinking City report · Corner Lot verdict response |
Explains outcomes as luck or single choices. | Names one mechanism (supply, vacancy, screening) correctly. | Traces a chain: decision → mechanism → who felt it, with evidence from trends or events. | Also names who the plan left out, unprompted, and what the model itself omits. |
| Metacognitive movement the baseline echo answers |
Echo question skipped or answered "my guess was right." | Notes agreement/disagreement with the baseline without explaining. | Identifies a specific change in their thinking and what caused it. | Characterizes the kind of change (assumption surfaced, blame reassigned, empathy relocated) and addresses their past self directly. |
Suggested weighting: the metacognitive row counts double — it's the point of the design. A completion-only alternative for low-stakes use: export submitted (✓), ≥6 reflections written (✓), ≥3 reading notes (✓), echo answered in ≥3 sentences (✓).
The reading list Everyone
The Reading Room's nine cards summarize these sources in the game's own words. For syllabi, library reserves, or students who want the real thing:
Logistics & FAQ Everyone
Privacy and data
No accounts, no server, no analytics. Everything — saves, baseline answers, reflections, reading notes — lives in the browser's local storage on that machine and leaves only as the file the student chooses to export.
Saves
One save per mode per browser. Autosave is continuous; "Continue" appears on the title screens. Shared lab machines may clear storage between logins — the habit that prevents all heartbreak is exporting at the end of every session (interim exports work in both modes). Starting a new game over an old save replaces it.
Requirements
Any modern desktop browser with WebGL (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari). Keyboard + mouse/trackpad recommended — Story Mode wants WASD. Internet is needed once per session for the two font/library CDNs. If the screen stays black, the machine likely has WebGL disabled — try another browser or machine.
Accessibility notes
All reading, reflection, and decision content is HTML text (screen-reader reachable and zoomable); the 3D world is visual garnish around it. Reduced-motion settings disable the landing video. For students who can't drive the 3D walk, pair them as the reflection-writer while a partner drives — the thinking work is fully shareable.
Common questions
- "Can students lose?" Not in Story Mode — every path completes; the meters just tell different stories. City Mode's review board can issue bad grades, which make excellent essays.
- "Do they need to finish to submit?" No. Both modes export interim work; grade what's there.
- "Can I see the baseline questions in advance?" Story: real housing share, a self-prediction, one choice housing already made for you. City: who gets hurt first when rent rises. They're intentionally answerable in a sentence.
- "How do I restart a machine for the next class?" Title screen → start a new game (replaces the save), or clear the site's browser storage.
The pairing question, one more time
If you only carry one discussion prompt out of this guide: after both modes, ask students — "In Story Mode you resented the system. In City Mode you were the system. What did you do to the person you used to be — and what would it have cost you not to?"