There’s a fairly good chance that nobody has ever sat in a maths classroom, looked at a sheet of expanding brackets and thought, I would rather be doing people’s taxes. I did, apparently, because that’s where The Taxman concept began.
Sitting at the back of Maths class, doing whatever you’re supposed to do when someone writes something like 3(x + 4) on the board and expects you to suddenly become interested in it. I was expanding brackets, copying things down and generally waiting for the lesson to end when the thought just appeared: I might as well be doing taxes.
It wasn’t some massive cinematic moment. No thunder. No dramatic music. Nobody burst through the classroom door carrying a briefcase full of money. I just stopped doing the equations and started scribbling TAXMAN in my maths jotter.
Then I kept thinking about it.
That’s usually the dangerous bit with an idea. Most thoughts disappear after five minutes. This one started growing. I imagined the office, the people working there, the cases that would come through the door and, eventually, an old English taxman who had apparently spent most of his life surrounded by paperwork.
Suddenly I wasn’t just thinking of a joke.
I was thinking about a game.
Welcome To The Department
The basic idea behind The Taxman is pretty simple. You’ve been employed by the Taxman himself because, despite what his job title might suggest, one man cannot possibly collect everybody’s tax on his own.
So now you’re part of the department.
Before you even begin the actual work, you’re given a choice that I think says quite a lot about what I wanted the game to be. Where do you want to work?
London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol and Cardiff are among the places you can choose from. It sounds like a small thing, but it immediately makes the game feel more personal. You’re not just pressing Start and being dumped into some anonymous office. You’re deciding where your career begins.
Then you’re allocated a desk. Your name’s on it.
That was one of those little details that became more important as I made the game. You’re suddenly not looking at a menu anymore. You’ve got a job. Somewhere inside this strange little tax department, somebody has actually prepared a desk for you.
Unfortunately, somebody also expects you to work.
What Actually Happens At The Desk?
This is where the tax part comes in, obviously.
The main gameplay revolves around dealing with taxpayers and their cases. You’ll examine the information you’re given, make decisions and try to do the job properly. The idea isn’t to make you sit through a university lecture on tax law, because I suspect that would result in roughly three players remaining.
Instead, the tax system gives the game its actual machinery. The cases are what you do when you’re sitting at the desk, while everything surrounding them gives the world its personality.
That’s also where things can get rather stupid.
While my dad was beta testing my game, he discovered something I had put into it: Santa Claus has a tax return.
I wasn’t expecting that to become one of the first things somebody found. It was just one of the ridiculous cases I thought would be funny to hide among the ordinary ones. Then Dad came across Santa and suddenly the whole idea made even more sense.
Because why shouldn’t Santa pay tax?
He’s running a massive toy operation. Has employees. Has transport. He’s got what must be an absolutely horrifying logistics department. Frankly, I’m surprised HMRC hasn’t been round the North Pole already.
The joke works because the game doesn’t treat Santa like some massive celebrity cameo. He just appears as another case that has landed on your desk.
You’ve got work to do, and taxpayers to rinse.
Unfortunately, this taxpayer is Santa Claus.
The World Around The Tax
The Taxman isn’t supposed to feel like a spreadsheet with some jokes stapled onto it. I wanted the department around the actual tax work to feel like a place that has existed for years before you arrived.
That means the game has room for newspapers, notices, strange documents, office problems, unusual cases and little things that don’t necessarily matter to your tax performance at all. Sometimes a printer might break, or you’ll find something odd in a file. Sometimes you’ll receive a message that makes you wonder why somebody in a government department thought it was necessary to send it.
Those little details matter because real workplaces are full of them. Nobody spends eight hours a day doing the exact thing they’re employed to do without interruption. At some point somebody’s going to lose a stapler, the kettle will break or someone will put something disgusting in the microwave.
I wanted that feeling in The Taxman.
The difference is that your workplace happens to have Santa Claus somewhere in the database.
Choosing Your Office Is Only The Beginning
The office system ended up becoming one of my favourite parts of the game because it points towards something bigger.
Your career isn’t only about how well you handle tax cases.
It’s also about what you do with the life surrounding the job.
Where do you live? How do you get to work? Do you stay in the same city? Do you chase a promotion? Would you rather have more money or a more comfortable life? At some point, do you move somewhere completely different?
Those choices can shape your career without turning them into stupid stat boosts.
Buying a better house shouldn’t suddenly make you 15% better at calculating tax. That’s not how houses work, unless I’ve been missing something fairly important.
Instead, the game can let you build your own version of a career. One player might begin in Edinburgh, rent a small flat and eventually move to London for a promotion. Someone else might stay in Glasgow for decades, buy a house and never feel the need to move anywhere.
Another player might spend their entire career chasing opportunities around the country.
None of those lives needs to be the “correct” one.
That’s the fun of it.
And Then There’s The Taxman
The Taxman himself is deliberately different from the world around him.
He’s your boss, not your character, and I didn’t want him wandering around the office like a video game NPC whose sole purpose is to bump into you every five minutes. He works better as a presence in the background.
You’ll hear from him through messages, instructions and important moments in your career. Sometimes he’ll have something useful to say. Sometimes he’ll simply remind you that he has noticed what you’ve been doing.
His humour is dry because I think that’s funnier.
If Santa Claus appears and The Taxman starts screaming, “WHAT IS SANTA DOING HERE?”, the joke explains itself. Give him the paperwork, let him stare at it for a second and have him respond with something like, “North Pole. Interesting. Carry on,” and suddenly the situation becomes much funnier.
Everyone inside the department thinks this is normal.
You’re the one wondering what the hell is happening.
The Easter Eggs
That idea has also shaped the strange taxpayers hiding throughout the game.
Some are completely fictional. Others are obvious parodies or references. There are famous fictional characters, seasonal characters and a few satirical versions of real public figures. They’re supposed to be things you stumble across rather than a big feature advertised on the front page.
The best reaction would be someone playing normally, opening a case and suddenly going:
“Hang on. Is that actually Dracula?”
That’s much better than putting a giant button on the main menu labelled FUNNY CELEBRITY TAXPAYERS.
There are also completely ridiculous original names hidden throughout the system. Some are deliberately terrible tax related names because, frankly, once you start writing people called things like Barry Taxwell and Derek Spreadsheet, you realise you’ve gone too far and then decide to keep going.
That’s the sort of humour I want the game to have.
It shouldn’t constantly shout that it’s funny.
It should occasionally catch you off guard.
I Wanted The Game To Have A Life Outside The Tax
This became increasingly important while I was building it. I kept it simple, and relaxed. Unlike real world taxes. This is just a concept while I was chewing a pen and not paying attention in Maths class remember.
The actual tax work is the thing that makes the game a game, but the career around it is what gives you a reason to keep coming back. You can eventually make choices about your home, your transport, your money, your career direction and whether you want to move to another office.
Those things don’t exist to make your tax skills stronger. They’re there because a person doesn’t stop existing when they leave work.
That gives the game a slightly different kind of progression. Instead of simply watching numbers go up, you’re watching a career develop.
Your first day becomes your first year.
Your first year becomes a promotion.
The promotion might lead to a transfer.
The transfer might mean moving house.
Eventually, you can look back and see the strange career you’ve built.
That’s much more interesting to me than simply having a bigger number next to your name.
Where The Idea Came From
There are definitely influences in the way I’ve thought about The Taxman.
I like British comedy where completely ordinary places become funny because everyone inside them behaves as though the ridiculous situation is perfectly normal. I’ve always liked that dry, awkward kind of humour where nobody needs to explain the joke because the situation itself does the work.
I also like television and stories where a workplace slowly becomes its own little world. You start with something ordinary, then gradually learn about the people, the strange rules and the bits nobody tells the new employee about.
That’s the feeling I wanted.
The Tax Department shouldn’t feel like a fantasy world that was created five minutes before you arrived. It should feel like you’ve walked into somewhere that’s been operating for years.
You just happen to have been given a desk in it.
Making The First Wots The Verdict Game
There’s another reason this game matters to me.
Wots The Verdict started with writing, reviews, and a few sketches. That’s still what I care about most, but I’ve always wanted the site to be somewhere I could make things too. The Taxman is the first time I’ve taken one of those ideas and turned it into something anyone can actually play.
The game was planned, written and shaped by me, while Base44 became the tool that helped turn those ideas into a functioning web game. I’m not going to pretend I built a game engine from scratch in my bedroom, because I didn’t. Base44 helped me get the thing working.
But having a tool doesn’t give you the idea.
It doesn’t decide that a tax game needs an old English boss called The Taxman. Or decide that the player should choose between Edinburgh and London. Or decide that Santa needs a tax return. It doesn’t sit in maths and scribble TAXMAN into a jotter.
That part came first.
The software simply gave me a way of getting it onto a screen.
And that’s what I’m most pleased about.
An idea that could quite easily have stayed as a stupid word in a school notebook is now something somebody else can actually sit down and play.
Indie Web Game
I don’t want to pretend The Taxman is some gigantic studio production. It isn’t, and I’m not interested in pretending otherwise.
It’s an indie web game made because I had a strange idea and decided to see how far I could take it.
That’s also why I’m quite excited about where it can go.
There are more taxpayers, Easter eggs, career choices, offices, strange documents and odd little discoveries to be added. The world can keep expanding without losing the basic thing that made the idea amusing in the first place. Unlike the real thing.
You have a desk.
You have a job.
Somebody expects you to collect tax.
And occasionally, for reasons that nobody has properly explained, the person whose paperwork you’re holding is Santa Claus.
That’s The Taxman.
It started with expanding brackets in a maths classroom.
It ended with a game.
I’m still not sure whether that’s an improvement for my maths education, but it was definitely more interesting.
Right, Enough Talking About It
I’ve spent enough time telling you what the game is.
Now you can actually play the bloody thing.
Choose your office. Take your seat. Open your first case and see what sort of career you can build inside the department. You might find Santa, or find one of the other ridiculous taxpayers hidden throughout the game. You might simply spend your first day trying to work out what you’re actually supposed to do.
That’s fine.
Everyone has a first day.
Welcome to the department.
Pay your taxes. Now we’ll decide where to mis-spend it.
Rating: ? Who knows, that’s for you to decide.
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