RollerCoaster Tycoon®: Deluxe
RCT Deluxe is one of those rare old gems that, no matter how much people try, has yet to have a spiritual successor fully recapture its essence or innovate in a meaningful way, and the reason for that is in the game’s fundamentally brilliant design: it’s a concise, well-balanced blend of extreme customization and structural rigidity, two seemingly-conflicting ideals that are perfectly intertwined. Coaster design, park layouts, scenery, and other aspects offer near-infinite variety, but the isometric view and deceptively simple and intuitive grid system offers a very acute precision to coaster refinement that allows a player to master the art of designing and redesigning coasters.
– Real player with 377.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Sandbox Games.
Where to begin? RollerCoaster Tycoon is arguably the best tycoon game of all time. The game’s development was mostly credited to only one man (Chris Sawyer), and was released in 1999. There were four games that defined my childhood. The Sims, Age of Empires II, Dungeon Keeper 2, and this.
RollerCoaster Tycoon truly gives you the power to make exactly the kind of amusement park you want to build. Even in the scenarios, it largely feels like a free building game; the game does not ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. For example, instead of asking you to build a park based on nothing but rollercoasters like some games might have implemented, Rollercoaster Tycoon simply plops you down on a plot of land and basically says, “Get this many guests and have a good park rating in three years. Have fun and buh-bye!” This game should be truly applauded for being a tycoon game that is not only great fun, but never turns into a chore by forcing you into situations where you feel you’re only doing something to beat a level. It gives you an end goal, and it’s up to you, the player, to decide exactly how you’ll get there.
– Real player with 125.4 hrs in game
RollerCoaster Tycoon® 2: Triple Thrill Pack
Where I grew up, in rural eastern Ukraine, in the early 2000’s, there was no internet, no smartphones, no kfc and NO FREE PORN! There was however intel pentium…and Roller Coaster Tycoon!!. I remember spending hours, meticulously building my park from scratch, earning milions on big rides and food, attracting 6k+ guests into my park…and then torturing them, by cutting off the escape routes, flooding paths and charging $15 for toilet. And it was magical, pure joy. Even now, with the graphics definitely looking tired, it will bring you hours of very simple fun, build a ride and see how much you can charge before guests say its enough. Or starve them, then build one burger bar, put a very steep price and watch money flooding in. Or even better, build a coaster that will eventually crash, then comfort all the mourners with free black balloons…and free rides on the coaster that just has crashed! Yes, this game was always my favourite, a safe haven where I could unleash all my sadistic fantasies! And after all these years, nothing has changed, I still love to see the message ‘Robert D. has just drowned’.
– Real player with 963.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Sandbox Games.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 is likely my favorite game of all time.
I’ve put much more than 500 hours into it spanning my entire life and continued to play it as a non-steam game whilest it was not available on Steam. When I saw that it was, my wallet got sad, because in just a few moments my money was gone.
This is in my opinion THE best RollerCoaster video game in existance, and well for that matter in my opinion the best Tycoon game of any developer. Everything is made to a precise definity and managing your park is easy, but at the same time heavily difficult! The more you know about how to play this game, the more fun it becomes.
– Real player with 153.6 hrs in game
SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition
Ever thought you could make a better city? Pah, I could be a better Mayor; well now you can! SimCity 4 is just that and offers this opportunity and lets you sit in the chair titled “mayor”. I’ve definitely clocked up more hours in the days I installed this on ME and XP.
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition is another one of those games that has been created by EA… EA? Not again you say - except this time.. EA has really created a game and has polished it up to its standards. SC4 is one of the older prequels to ‘Societies’ and the 2013 SimCity relaunch; released after Sim City 3000, it showed off superb graphic capabilities at the time and invented new ways to enjoy building a simulated city, where you play as the city’s major, managing the: finances, housing stock, roads, ports, resident satisfaction, transit, and employment.
– Real player with 567.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Classic Sandbox Games.
Ah, SimCity 4, the best, in my opinion, of all of the SimCity games. The graphics are dated, being that this was released around fifteen years ago, but don’t let that deter you. Play times depend on how much you enjoy city building games. I myself have spent 2-4 hours today playing it.
The U-Drive-It mode is pretty cool, as it lets you drive through your transportation system with a variety of vehicles, but can get annoying over time with the other cars.
The regions are a nice addition, as you can have cities depend on each other, plus some of the regions come in the shape of several real-life cities, albeit with no structures. In the same vein, importing and exporting cities & regions are useful. If you have a sprawling metropolis and want to share it with the world, you can! Have a police state with stations on every corner? You now can show it to your friends and family!
– Real player with 325.6 hrs in game
Constructor
What to say about this game? Well, to start with some points here:
The game is a remaster of the original game Constructor launched in 1997, it presents remastered elements as well as the original units sounds presented back there.
There is new things in this version such as new buildings and even a mission mode that will be released in the future, those missions are like in Mob Wars (Street Wars) in where you need to execute specific things in order to win the map.
Although some of the reviews are negative, saying the game has bugs, the multiplayer doesn’t work or something else, the devs team are constantly working in bringing updates and fixes for those things that can break the game.
– Real player with 157.2 hrs in game
TL/DR: Splendid remake of an old game, if you liked it then, you will like it now. But some problems from the original remains.
A remake of a classic, old school game.
Some features have been updated to be more digestible, like the UI, graphics are more polished, there is some few additional content, but the game still feels precisely like the old one, and that is a good thing.
So if you enjoyed this game back then, you will likely be delighted to see this new, polished edition.
And there is even full controller support, in a game that frankly did not need one. While playing this game with a gamepad is certainly a step back from the keyboard and mouse, it needs to be said that the devs were industrious enough to provide such a complete support, specially considering there are many games out there that really need controller support and do not have it officially, or have a bad one.Having said that, some problems of the original game remain, and this may even be a good point somewhat, since changing them would require to radically change the nature of the game. But the problems are that you may as well be skipping the construction of many buildings, whose features are not needed to prosper in the game. Actually, they may even be detrimental, in a cost to profit analysis, So some “undesirables” (the in game term for some sort of “agents”) will never be played, unless you really want to see how they act like, while others are superb. And this goes up to the maximum difficulty level, with a full opponent rooster.
– Real player with 64.4 hrs in game
BQM - BlockQuest Maker-
BQM is a surprisingly fun game with an interesting way of creating and sharing your own levels!
BQM is an isometric dungeon crawler with puzzle and combat elements. You can start right off playing the official levels which are there mainly to get you used to the mechanics of the game…. but the meet and potatos of this little gem is the vast ammount of user made levels which make up most of the game. An internet connection is required to play levels, but this is hardly an issue as you can mess around with the level editor and play or own content offline.
– Real player with 90.9 hrs in game
I really enjoy speed running this game, it’s a lot of fun. It scratches my itch for a Zelda-like Super Mario Maker style game. If that sounds interesting to you, then I recommend it. I don’t have any major dislikes about the game, you can even filter by language if you want to.
The console editions do feature some DLC, which isn’t featured on Steam. So I do recommend you examine the other editions if you own a supported console, and are interested in the DLC.
– Real player with 24.7 hrs in game
Railroad Tycoon 3
Ah Railroad Tycoon 3, my childhood. Before I go any further, the game WILL work on Vista and Windows 7. Go to http://hawkdawg.com/ to find patches for blurry textures and the Vista fix.
Railroad Tycoon 3 is the third installment of the Railroad Tycoon series. Developed by PopTop Software and The Gathering of Developers, Railroad Tycoon 3 introduces the 3D engine to the Railroad Tycoon series. Railroad Tycoon 3 has three main game modes. Campaign, Sandbox, and Scenarios. If you want to play a challenging campaign mode, you have it, or if you just want to go and lay some track, you can do that too. In campaign mode, there are three difficulties; Easy, Medium, and Hard. You can choose between 25 different games to choose from, and can go from left to right, or start at the hardest one. In scenario mode, you play against a computer player on a selected map, and race to be the highest company to win. In sandbox mode, you pick a map and time period, and then go have fun!
– Real player with 160.5 hrs in game
The game gets a thumbs up. Classic and tons of fun.
Edit: It does seem to crash very frequently, however. I guess that’s what you get with a game as old as this one.
Cannot, however, give a thumbs up to Steam support on this one. As many others have said, you will most likely find that it crashes within seconds of launching the app. This is because of a default setting that conflicts with just about every modern video card. You won’t be able to get into the settings menu to fix this, crashes too quckly. If you run into this problem, you will have to go to a third party site and download an updated config file, replace the original, and then the game will function. The file is safe, the people who created this have my gratitude, but customers SHOULD NOT have to be subjected to downloading a file from a third party site in order to use a product they’ve been charged for. Upon contacting Steam support, they offered no assistance with this matter. I asked for a refund, was denied (i was outside of the timeframe so that was expected), but I also received no attempt from support to get the game running. The last part should not have happened, no excuse for that. At that point, I finally went ahead and downloaded the file (I was not comfortable doing this). Glad to say it worked :)
– Real player with 158.5 hrs in game
Ant War: Domination
Ant War: Domination, the much anticipated remake fo Ant War (the flash game from 10 years ago that required 1,000,000,000 ants to beat and most sites only had the demo).
After years of turmoil and cheap facade, have no fear, Ant War is here. Build your nest and feed your colony, or be a Stalin copycat and send them all to war to die to the mighty CAT & DOG.
Scouts will find you food and report on enemy movements, nurses will raise your colony’s youth and re-edumacate them and train their skittles to be fit for battle, even adding a little defensive bonus to your massive army. Workers will build your mighty fortress and rain hell down upon thee enemy, also they add a massive defensive boost as they can man those man-killer machines. Soldier ants? Well, they’re good for cannon fodder, but my fuck do they have no other use, because your enemies will scale to meet their stats in combat!
– Real player with 16.7 hrs in game
Oh man where do I even begin?
Short Review:
Good game but not for everyone. Game is built to grind and can be repetative.
Pretty much one of the oldest clicker games out there.
Maybe get on sale ( 50%)
9.5/10
Long Review
So I see many of negative reviews and I do agree with many of them, but I will have to totally recommend this little piece of gem as I grab it as soon as I saw it.
I first played this game maybe 8 or 9 years ago, don’t even remember how I even got my hands on it and I totally loved it, made my day everyday seeing my colony grow and fight with the believible surroundings that you can pretty much live it as if it was real. Yes, you may probably get this game for free somewhere out there (just like many games in steam) but I just wanted to own this little gem in my library and also a way to support the devs that make my(as well as many’s) childhood a little bit brighter. I mean 2$ that cost less than a cup of coffee. You have no obligation to buy this game so please don’t whine about it for it being not free, no one’s forcing you to buy the game.
– Real player with 16.2 hrs in game
Wyrmsun
Fun little old-school rts. Wyrmsun has a lot to offer; there are single player quest missions that are reasonably challenging and will easily fill a few hours of your time in adition to a grand strategy mode (I’m having trouble getting my head around how it works atm), map editor and multiplayer (pretty much dead online, but if you have friends with wyrmsun, you can take advantage of multiplayer) as well as a tech tree to unlock with quest progress, fair amount of lore and a hero creator which allows you to custom-build a heroic unit and use them in story mode missions.
– Real player with 682.8 hrs in game
A wonderful game that is still getting updated and cared for. This RTS game is very reminiscent of Warcraft 2 Tides of Darkness, and has a lot of love for the art style and systems based there. Wyrmsun isn’t simply a fan made love novel to the game though, it actively builds on the mechanics and systems. Persistent heroes that retain their items and experience across ALL game play, a progression system for all units to level as they work and fight, and while there are currently only three player controlled races, these races are broken into tribes and build up into other grand factions of their race, changing units weapons and bonuses as you want, resulting in nearly unlimited options per game, flexible and reliable. And thats not to mention the ROBUST economy within this game, at first it might not seem reasonable to be building a lot of furniture and jewelry as well as leather, but you can turn quite the profit by doing this, and it makes it a little more bearable if you have been cut off from expanding to new mining locations, making even a desperate turn around in late game possible with some skill. I bought the flair pack addons for the sole purpose of helping the devs with this game, because it honestly deserves more attention than it gets. Wonderful game, and an honest 10/10
– Real player with 43.9 hrs in game
Stronghold Crusader 2
Stop, dont go any further. If you were considering this game wether it is worth a purchase. Ill tell you right now, it is definitely not.
Its a piece of trash garbage game that was forcefully defacated unto the faces of its true loyal supporters and fan base, the people who brought you the orignal Stronghold that was beloved and missed were long gone during the unholy birthing of this atrocity.
I have played and deconstructed every stronghold and dozens of rts games back in the day and know what it was about each game that people adored and what it was that people despised.
– Real player with 185.6 hrs in game
The StrongHold series has always been one of my favourite ones, and this game at the end of 2018 like every other game of this series still is one of the best from FireFly Studios.
The core of the game stays the same - build castles, gather resources, control peasants as a king, keep their happiness and work going, train your troops, harvest taxes and money, and of course build tons of structures - there are really dozens of them, from the farms to churches, fortifications and army building; of course, given the desert/crusader setting of this game, you’ll have lots of weapons and armies too - both offensive and defensive.
– Real player with 142.4 hrs in game
Rescue HQ - The Tycoon
These type of games are very calming to me. I enjoy the planning and then watching the everyday theatre play before my eyes. Then the bloody alarm goes off and I realise I have do something!
There is a campaign mode so you can start small then expand as your experience increases or, if you are like me, you just like messing with the ‘sandbox’ mode. The campaign is great for learning how to manage everything. It is not easy trying to run a split-shift system with 3 different agencies AT THE SAME TIME. You really need to build-up to that or you will be throwing things at the cat/dog/wife/children.
– Real player with 32.0 hrs in game
This game for me felt weird. I liked it, but there where some downsides. (But maybe I am just bad at it so they seemed like downsides)
First the games pace. At the beginning it can feel a bit slow then at the end it can get quite frantic. The jump happens quite quick leaving no middle game. Towards the end, as an example, emergencies are asking for 20 plus cops and will take like 6 hours to resolve. Since the middle game barley exist, it can seem overwhelming as you have not built up your forces.
– Real player with 24.2 hrs in game