Neohaven Noodles
Open the game- Year
- 2025
- Objective
- Other
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Preloaded
Objective
NCS had built its reputation on in-person residentials and grants but wanted to reach millions of 15-to-17-year-olds through a format native to them: games. Research with Livity and PRELOADED found financial literacy — budgeting, saving, dealing with debt — was the sharpest gap for that age group, and turning it into a low-stakes game let NCS teach the subject without it feeling like school.
Solution
Players open the game straight in a browser, no download, and take over a noodle shop in the near-future city of Neohaven. Across ten in-game days they cook and serve noodles, choose which ingredients to buy, and talk their way through incidents with customers and neighbours. When cash runs short, players decide whether to borrow from a loan shark — a choice that turns "bad debt" and "interest" into a real, ticking problem inside the story rather than a lecture. Progress saves between visits, so the ten days can be played in short sessions, and the choices made along the way lead to one of several different endings, making replays play out differently. A full run runs upwards of 90 minutes end to end.
Results
The game drew almost a quarter of a million participants in just over two months online. Its launch added roughly 280,000 digital experiences in the program's final quarter alone, taking NCS's digital-experience total for 2023–2025 to nearly 298,000 against a target of 75,000.
- 1
The player opens the game directly in a mobile browser via a link (either on the NCS site or at neohavennoodles.co.uk), with no download or install required; the game introduces Neohaven, a near-future cyberpunk megacity with hyper-globalization and an unstable economy, where the player is opening their own noodle shop.
- 2
The stated goal is to survive the noodle shop's first 10 days in business; the game is structured as a sequence of days, each containing a block of shop work followed by a block of decisions.
- 3
The core loop plays like a visual novel: the player reads dialogue with on-screen characters and taps response choices, interwoven with simple cooking interactions as customers are served noodles, which generates the day's revenue.
- 4
The player makes business choices, such as the quality of ingredients to buy, that directly affect expenses and downstream events, then reviews each day's income against spending to decide whether the shop stays afloat — the game's core lesson on budgeting and savings.
- 5
Random incidents interrupt the run, such as a break-in at the shop, each framed as a choice with direct financial consequences.
- 6
A varied cast of Neohaven residents, including non-human characters like the robot VAR-47, visit the counter with their own stories and financial dilemmas; the player learns from, helps, or turns away each one, encountering a different money scenario through every character.
- 7
A persistent pressure track centers on debt: the player makes choices about loans and interest that build toward a confrontation with a loan shark named Ronnie, giving "bad debt" the form of a character to answer to rather than an abstract concept.
- 8
Player choices branch the story, leading to different outcomes and one of several possible endings by day 10.
- 9
A full playthrough runs over 90 minutes, but progress saves between sessions so players can stop and resume in short sessions, and the branching design invites replaying with different decisions.
