▼ Not recommended
12 hrs
It has the heart and the soul of a good tycoon game but it's absolutely ruined by one thing:
MOTIVATION.
I hate saying this, but I can't recommend this game until the motivation is polished. This game is a diamond covered in layers and layers of the dirt that is motivation.
First of all, I love games like this. I love Game Dev Tycoon (I have more hours in Startup Panic than I do in Game Dev Tycoon), I love all the Kairosoft games, hell you may catch me on Roblox playing stupid tycoons like this. I've been around the block for games like this and I am a big sucker for them.
I honestly enjoyed this game and I beat the entire campaign.
Here's what I liked:
- The whole marketing aspect. You get to market in specific areas of the world to help your sales. This was really neat, and I loved having to think about how I was going to take over my competitors by dominating the area they were marketing in. Watching you slowly climb the market share and beat your competitors really gave my brain a dopamine rush.
- The whole aesthetic and vibe of the game. Really cute art style and the UI is easy to navigate and isn't really frustrating.
- The feeling of progression and watching your team and you grow.
- The different endings! This was a really cool and wholesome touch.
What really hurt the game:
- Motivation. Motivation is a feature in this game that encourages you to switch off on workers so you don't overwork them. If you ignore their motivation, they will be unproductive, and in return this will damage whatever product or contract you were working on.
Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic mechanic. Almost every tycoon game similar to this has a 'morale' mechanic of sorts. This is so you don't overwork your "Ace" (lets be real, we all have an "ace" person who we dump everything on) and it also encourages you to build your other workers. What makes it borderline unplayable here however, is how fast motivation depletes and how unproductive your workers are below 80 motivation. Usually after one project, anyone at 100% morale will drop to around 70-80. The difference is night and day with motivation, if your team is above 80 motivation, you'll get fantastic 10/10 results. If anyone is below 80 motivation, your score of 10/10 will drop to a 2/10. Did I mention that you can also lose motivation at random?
- Completely out of pocket RNG events. I like when RNG stuff happens. You have your usual "your company has been hacked", "the power went out and we lost progress of everything", "Jerry had explosive diarrhea and tripped on the server while running to the bathroom". What really hurts is when you send your people on vacation (because they're below 80 morale) and then they get kidnapped and held for ransom. This adds unnecessary stress, is extremely unrealistic (both because you don't send your workers on vacation every other month, and the odds of them getting held for ransom is extremely low), and costs you money. At this point, I just cut my losses and said goodbye to my workers that were held ransom.
- The game is also extremely vague. They have tutorials for the essentials, but for the smaller things such as motivation, MENTIONING THE IMPORTANCE OF SALARY FOR YOUR WORKERS, how marketing can affect your sales, what the numbers and the sliders mean while making a product, they do not have. The thing is: these factors are also all extremely important. I figured out what the sliders and the numbers meant while developing a product, but for the marketing stuff I found out all this through the forums on Steam, and without the internet, there would have been no way (for me at least) to figure out what the heck was going on.
The game mentions "you need to have high motivation for your workers to be productive!" but I didn't realize high motivation literally meant >80% motivation.
- This game feels extremely repetitive. This is because of the motivation feature.
Here is the cycle that I went through at endgame:
1. Develop a product. I usually go for 10's across the board. The recommended stats is 13. I send my A team in. We are well over 20 for each stat. This will take six weeks.
2. While that's happening, I usually train the people I'm not currently using or do a contract.
3. The product is finished. I get 10, 10, 7. I want to find out why, so I do the "review" function to find out what I can improve
4. The game tells me that I did too much in two areas, and not enough in one area. I am confused because the recommended stats was 13 and everything was at 26. It turns out one person was at 50% motivation. I scream.
6. I send everyone on the most expensive vacation. They come back six weeks later.
7. Repeat 1-6.
I probably sound like a broken record, repeating motivation over and over, but this feature needs to get fine tuned. It's not realistic at all that people work for 6 weeks and then get a 6 week vacation paid by their employer. Fixing motivation will help make this game feel less repetitive.
If the devs are reading this, please fine tune your motivation feature. I know nothing of game development, but I game a lot and I feel like this would help:
- Lower the rate motivation falls outside of tasks. I feel like this falls extremely fast even if the workers aren't working. They may get randomly frustrated or something and it might bring them to less than 80% motivation.
- Lower the rate motivation falls INSIDE of tasks. I feel like after producing an feature, they drop below 80% fast. Instead of dropping it to 80%, drop it to 85% and tie it in with the next point.
- Create some sort of Productivity gauge for the workers: This will help balance out motivation and determine how productive a person will be. The difference is night and day with people below 80% motivation. Rather than making it night and day, keep the workers production value the same until they hit 60% motivation. Any worker below 60% have a chance to start making more mistakes, getting angrier more, hating their job, and in return start decreasing productivity in whatever product you are working on. The lower the motivation, the more mistakes they make, etc. etc.
I suggest this because it makes sense that unmotivated workers start to slack off and make mistakes, and also this makes managing motivation a bit more fun and less repetitive.
Man I typed a lot.
MOTIVATION.
I hate saying this, but I can't recommend this game until the motivation is polished. This game is a diamond covered in layers and layers of the dirt that is motivation.
First of all, I love games like this. I love Game Dev Tycoon (I have more hours in Startup Panic than I do in Game Dev Tycoon), I love all the Kairosoft games, hell you may catch me on Roblox playing stupid tycoons like this. I've been around the block for games like this and I am a big sucker for them.
I honestly enjoyed this game and I beat the entire campaign.
Here's what I liked:
- The whole marketing aspect. You get to market in specific areas of the world to help your sales. This was really neat, and I loved having to think about how I was going to take over my competitors by dominating the area they were marketing in. Watching you slowly climb the market share and beat your competitors really gave my brain a dopamine rush.
- The whole aesthetic and vibe of the game. Really cute art style and the UI is easy to navigate and isn't really frustrating.
- The feeling of progression and watching your team and you grow.
- The different endings! This was a really cool and wholesome touch.
What really hurt the game:
- Motivation. Motivation is a feature in this game that encourages you to switch off on workers so you don't overwork them. If you ignore their motivation, they will be unproductive, and in return this will damage whatever product or contract you were working on.
Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic mechanic. Almost every tycoon game similar to this has a 'morale' mechanic of sorts. This is so you don't overwork your "Ace" (lets be real, we all have an "ace" person who we dump everything on) and it also encourages you to build your other workers. What makes it borderline unplayable here however, is how fast motivation depletes and how unproductive your workers are below 80 motivation. Usually after one project, anyone at 100% morale will drop to around 70-80. The difference is night and day with motivation, if your team is above 80 motivation, you'll get fantastic 10/10 results. If anyone is below 80 motivation, your score of 10/10 will drop to a 2/10. Did I mention that you can also lose motivation at random?
- Completely out of pocket RNG events. I like when RNG stuff happens. You have your usual "your company has been hacked", "the power went out and we lost progress of everything", "Jerry had explosive diarrhea and tripped on the server while running to the bathroom". What really hurts is when you send your people on vacation (because they're below 80 morale) and then they get kidnapped and held for ransom. This adds unnecessary stress, is extremely unrealistic (both because you don't send your workers on vacation every other month, and the odds of them getting held for ransom is extremely low), and costs you money. At this point, I just cut my losses and said goodbye to my workers that were held ransom.
- The game is also extremely vague. They have tutorials for the essentials, but for the smaller things such as motivation, MENTIONING THE IMPORTANCE OF SALARY FOR YOUR WORKERS, how marketing can affect your sales, what the numbers and the sliders mean while making a product, they do not have. The thing is: these factors are also all extremely important. I figured out what the sliders and the numbers meant while developing a product, but for the marketing stuff I found out all this through the forums on Steam, and without the internet, there would have been no way (for me at least) to figure out what the heck was going on.
The game mentions "you need to have high motivation for your workers to be productive!" but I didn't realize high motivation literally meant >80% motivation.
- This game feels extremely repetitive. This is because of the motivation feature.
Here is the cycle that I went through at endgame:
1. Develop a product. I usually go for 10's across the board. The recommended stats is 13. I send my A team in. We are well over 20 for each stat. This will take six weeks.
2. While that's happening, I usually train the people I'm not currently using or do a contract.
3. The product is finished. I get 10, 10, 7. I want to find out why, so I do the "review" function to find out what I can improve
4. The game tells me that I did too much in two areas, and not enough in one area. I am confused because the recommended stats was 13 and everything was at 26. It turns out one person was at 50% motivation. I scream.
6. I send everyone on the most expensive vacation. They come back six weeks later.
7. Repeat 1-6.
I probably sound like a broken record, repeating motivation over and over, but this feature needs to get fine tuned. It's not realistic at all that people work for 6 weeks and then get a 6 week vacation paid by their employer. Fixing motivation will help make this game feel less repetitive.
If the devs are reading this, please fine tune your motivation feature. I know nothing of game development, but I game a lot and I feel like this would help:
- Lower the rate motivation falls outside of tasks. I feel like this falls extremely fast even if the workers aren't working. They may get randomly frustrated or something and it might bring them to less than 80% motivation.
- Lower the rate motivation falls INSIDE of tasks. I feel like after producing an feature, they drop below 80% fast. Instead of dropping it to 80%, drop it to 85% and tie it in with the next point.
- Create some sort of Productivity gauge for the workers: This will help balance out motivation and determine how productive a person will be. The difference is night and day with people below 80% motivation. Rather than making it night and day, keep the workers production value the same until they hit 60% motivation. Any worker below 60% have a chance to start making more mistakes, getting angrier more, hating their job, and in return start decreasing productivity in whatever product you are working on. The lower the motivation, the more mistakes they make, etc. etc.
I suggest this because it makes sense that unmotivated workers start to slack off and make mistakes, and also this makes managing motivation a bit more fun and less repetitive.
Man I typed a lot.
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