Priest Simulator

About this game

Priest Simulator is a small, replayable game about running a Catholic parish in rural Ireland for forty-odd years. One event a year, one decision, about five to nine minutes a run. The church is the setting rather than the target: the comedy is entirely in the people, the committees, the leaking roof and whoever has opinions about the flowers.

Each year draws an event weighted by the year you are in, the state of the parish and a set of hidden stats. You pick one of three options, the year resolves, and consequences posted forward from earlier decisions land whenever they were due. After year five, quiet years start passing with only a line of narration, which is how a career covers four decades without asking you for forty decisions. Collection income, upkeep, decay, attendance and stress all keep drifting in the background either way.

Nine priests, each with their own way of failing

Every priest carries modifiers that apply for the whole run rather than a starting bonus that washes out, so each one fails differently. Fr. Colm burns out. Fr. Liam and Fr. Oisín go bankrupt. Fr. Seamus lets the building go. Difficulty is shown as dots and is a measured composite of how often a run ends in burnout, bankruptcy or closure and how high a ceiling the priest can reach at all, and it pays back as a multiplier on your final score. Three of the nine are unlocked by playing, and locked cards tell you the condition rather than hiding it.

The number you replay to beat

Legacy is the run’s score, tallied row by row on the ending screen and multiplied by your ending. Careless play lands around 1,500 and committed play around 15,000. Thirteen milestones pay out six to nine times a run just to say well done, and anything earned during a quiet year is held over and shown at your next decision, because a reward nobody sees is not a reward.

Everyone in the parish is fictional, including Mrs Murphy. There is no backend, no account and no network calls while you play. Saves live in your own browser.