City Game Studio: a tycoon about game dev
City Game Studio
I joined the open beta for City Game Studio a little while ago. Ever since I have seen it grow substantially. The game has been improved so much in a short amount of time and I can only see it getting better and better from here on out. The developer is very active and takes all the feedback and criticism he gets very seriously. Many of my own suggestions have already made it into the game and whenever an issue arises he is quick to fix it.
The game takes place in a city where you can rent, buy and even build your own studios and exhibitor centers. When your company is doing good you obviously want to expand and get even larger teams working on even bigger titles. The result of that can be very satisfying.
– Real player with 198.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Capitalism Management Games.
Overview
First off, on advice from this author’s attorney Frankie “Fine Print” Lymann, copycat games are not a crime. (See Data East USA v. Epyx for proof that copycats do not constitute copyright infringement.) Remember Game Dev Tycoon? Take the awesomeness of the aforementioned game, add interior decorating, an outside world where buildings can be rented, bought, and even constructed, and then add in some nice new ideas (along with a bad idea) and you have City Game Studio. In case the reader doesn’t know, the game is a management sim in which the player starts a game company starting in the year of the player’s choosing, and goes from rags to riches through developing and publishing video games.
– Real player with 43.6 hrs in game
Death Game+
Death Game+ has a simplistic artstyle that’s incredibly easy to pickup and play around in.
However, the game provides very little challenge, dying is incredibly easy and the campaign is relatively short and beat very quickly. The character acceleration is also insane and makes yourself hard to control so exploring a level is actually more difficult than dying in one.
if you’ve got money to burn and want do play something silly this is definetly the game for you.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Capitalism Arcade Games.
Really bad
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Silicon City
I really enjoy this game! The perfect amount of challenge while still being great fun and just a little bit mindless since I play to relax and not to create more work for myself. I look forward to the next evolution of this game!
– Real player with 26.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Capitalism Procedural Generation Games.
Very nice take on SimCity-style games. I especially enjoy the graphs of various metrics, and ability to really drill down into each silizen’s life. I am excited for continued development and look forward to how this game will evolve!
From a playability standpoint - on my laptop (8gb ram, i7 (4 cores @ 2.20GHz)) at lowest settings, the game plays reasonably when going on the 1x speed. Either of the faster speed options causes the game to become very choppy. Even when using 1980’s top-down style it seems to be quite slow (perhaps because that’s just a different camera angle?). Increasing simulation speed also seems to mess with the power grid distribution: when my network is not super-saturated with electricity, running at a faster simulation speed makes parts of my city run out of power. But if I turn it back down to 1x and wait a bit of time, all of the buildings will come back online.
– Real player with 17.6 hrs in game
Factory Magnate
Factory Magnate is part factory builder, part business tycoon. It puts you in the shoes of an industrious factory engineer with a small loan of a million credits. Your goal is to build an empire of factories spanning multiple planets in a procedurally generated solar system. You seek to dominate the solar system through sheer wealth and influence, not military might or political power.
AUTOMATION BY DEFAULT
You don’t control a character and you can place factory buildings anwyhere, as long as you have the money to do so. This takes the “early game” known from other similar games out of the equation, because you jump straight to automation and skip all the manual labor.
NO CRAFTING
It’s all about the money.. because in this game, money is your most important resource.
You don’t craft buildings, you buy them.
PROFIT IS EVERYTHING
You earn money selling your goods to the locals. They seem to have an endless supply of money to throw at you, but if you saturate the market, prices will drop - possibly making your factories operate at a loss. It’s up to you to strike a balance.
THE FACTORY NEVER SLEEPS
At the core of the game sits the main challenge: the factory is always running, and you must pay upkeep. If you’re not selling enough to make a profit, you’ll soon be out of business.
You. Must. Keep. Selling.
Gremlins, Inc. – Card Game
This original digital card game offers intense sessions for 2 to 6 players. At the core of gameplay lie two key mechanics: “hand management” and “take that”.
SET IN THE WORLD OF GREMLINS, INC.
The game is set in the world of corrupt capitalist gremlins of the future, the setting that’s already familiar to the tabletop community from the digital board game Gremlins, Inc. .
This card game is a standalone game with its own original set of rules and mechanics, and does not require ownership or previous experience with the previously released digital board game.
BUILD PROJECTS WHILE ATTACKING OTHERS AND DEFENDING YOUR OWN ACHIEVEMENTS
The sessions are played for score and for rounds. The player with the highest score at the end of the session wins. Build temporary and permanent projects, play instant action cards and camouflage your plans from the opponents while preparing your attacks.
SINGLE-PLAYER AND MULTIPLAYER MODES
The sessions typically last between 20 and 60 minutes. The game supports single-player and multiplayer modes, including peer to peer sessions as well as games played on the official servers, and allows to play with different decks.
PROVEN BY REAL-LIFE SESSIONS
Before we set to make it into a digital game, this project existed as a real-life card game enjoyed around the world in 6 languages.
A VIBRANT COMMUNITY AND A PUBLIC ROADMAP
We release this card game under the Early Access program as we’ll be expanding and modifying it based on the community feedback. The roadmap includes such features as team mode, ranked sessions and the support of Steam Workshop.
SimCasino
I honestly am upset giving this game a thumbs down because as the game progressed through the early access releases, it honestly looked like the structure of this game was going to build up into something great. Sadly, the dev team have taken this project into full release much too early and I worry that everything that at first glance might seem like placeholders are, in fact, here to stay.
There is no variety in guest appearances; just the same pallet swaps of hair, skin, shirt and pants. This also includes any entertainers you hire or VIPs you invite to your casino; they all just blend together without any kind of visual differences to make looking at your casino population grow from a few dozen people to thousands all that interesting. And it just feel like a massive shame that the magician you hired to preform on stage is dressed the same as everyone in the audience.
– Real player with 74.3 hrs in game
For an early release this is pretty good. It has it’s issues and needs a lot more content but it’s definitely worth giving a try if you enjoy sim tycoon style games.
That said currently (12/31/2020) there are some things that could be improved and I’m going to give a list of suggestions below in case the developers actually read these reviews:
- My clock display is set to a 12 hour clock but peak hours are still listed in military time.
*The minimum pay out for a slot machine grand prize is 10 dollars but we default to penny slots. If they are paying a penny one dollar is a huge return, minimum payout should be based on the cost per pull. Also, why is the AI spending ten dollars a pull for a game with a 25 dollar grand prize? That’s insane.
– Real player with 52.2 hrs in game
Asset Flip
Ever wanted to play a game that has every feature you’ve ever wanted in a game?
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Introducing, the most unanticipated title to hit the shores of the gaming community since that last indie game you bought that was utter trash.
Build, craft, survive, and asset flip.
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Click the Visit Website button on this store page to jump straight in!
Presenting, an ever evolving multiplayer sandbox environment where you can craft an increasing number of items, build empires, explore environments, kill enemies, level-up, and even buy loot crates for unique and rare non-gameplay altering aesthetics as we progress through the development process. All the while having the game itself being manipulated and moulded by the community - a mod-centric asset flipping survival experience.
That’s right! This game is moddable, and it is our primary focus. It is you, the player, who will direct this game’s story, playable features, quests, AI, and any other feature that you can imagine and wish to see within this realm, alongside the direction of the developer.
Voting will occur on what assets you want to see flipped within our expanding universe. You too can add your own Unreal Engine assets to the game and have the community choose the most popular mods to see officially asset flipped. Each flipped asset that is officially introduced to the game will be meticulously integrated and optimised within the framework we desire to create a unique player experience.
Join us on our journey to flip as many assets as possible while maintaining a coherent and unique gaming experience.
Academia : School Simulator
I am a huge fan of Rimworld, I really enjoyed Prison Architect and plus, I’m a teacher. So I was pretty excited about this game.
I’m giving it a hesitant thumbs up on the premise that it will deliver on its promises as it progresses through EA. It’s very bare bones at the moment but I’m hopeful that it will live up to its potential as its exactly the kind of game that I would love if it were much, much bigger.
As a teacher, I do have some feedback on the academic side of things for the developers:
– Real player with 163.6 hrs in game
TL;DR
It’s fine, but not worth $20 because it has very little replay value.
Overview
Academia: School Simulator is a game. It’s challenging to call it a good game, but it certainly isn’t a bad one. I originally purchased this game after seeing it on youtube and being interesting in a school sandbox game, in which I could do a variety of things from build the best school, to making a living hellscape. Academia: School Simulator, did not meet those expectations.
Story
I don’t truly demand story in every game I play, but I feel like this could use a little… anything? I dunno even just a: Gramps left me his inheritance and I was told to spend it on his dying wish: building a school. Whatever, moving on.
– Real player with 98.7 hrs in game
Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game
This game is quite entertaining if your into the idea of managing a restaurant. Keep in mind, when I mention the negatives, that this game is still being worked on and not even at version 1 yet. I find that the game has a bit of charm and every update addresses something that I feel the game is missing. At first the game seems to progress quickly, giving you lots of skill points and new missions rather quickly, this really helps get you into the game, as there are some tedious issues when your just starting out. At first, you’ve got a lot to do before you can open your restaurant and, as mentioned, that can make the start seem a little slow going and dull. Also, the flow of the game might take some getting used to in order to start making a profit, but it shouldn’t take too long to get the hang of it.
– Real player with 379.8 hrs in game
No, not yet. I wouldn’t recommend this to a friend until it delivered more on the depth of creating a successful Menu. For me that’s really the attractive and interesting part of playing this game which separates it from any other kind of similar simulator. That turned out to be a much shallower pool than what I had hoped to find in the game as I progressed.
The system in place for the way that you create a menu item I don’t like at all. You essentially have a talent tree system with points you spend on from XP gained during your shift. each tier such as Starter, Main, Dessert, etc has its own branch in the talent tree to spend your points in. to unlock new recipes to customise you spend your points here to unlock templates that you can customise. The game gives you a lose definition of the dish; it must contain X percent of your Protein, it must meet X criteria of fat, this many vegetables, this much seasoning. The problem for me is that kills the concept entirely.
– Real player with 105.4 hrs in game
Megaquarium
Have you ever wanted to run an aquarium? You can build and manage one with Megaquarium!
If you have played any management game before you will already have an idea of what to expect: you make exhibits to let your creativity take over, manage employees, and hopefully turn a profit in the process.
While not particularly innovative, the game manages to hit enough of the right notes to be enjoyable and relaxing, especially if you fancy the idea of running an aquarium.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1652866771
– Real player with 59.0 hrs in game
Fairly Realistic and Lots of Good Fun
This is a well rounded title with lots of room to grow!
Pros:
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Accurate and realistic modeling. I keep fish as a hobby and although most of the animal husbandry mechanics are significantly simplified they are still more or less pretty accurate. Most of the fish artwork is very accurate. These are not made up fish that don’t actually exist.
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Simulation and tycoon aspects are well thought out and satisfying. For the most part it feels like success / failures make sense. A grouper ate your anthias because they were small enough to fit in it’s mouth, makes sense!
– Real player with 56.8 hrs in game