Drug Empire

Feels like one of those early 2000s German tycoon experiments -no clue what’s happening, but I’m somehow thriving. Growing plants, cooking mystery formulas, bossing around dealers… It's okay. Game Price? Yeah… overshot harder than my humidity settings. 🍄💸😄

Follow my curator page for more nostalgic tycoon chaos, questionable chemistry, and games that cost more than your first grow lamp! 💡🍄✨
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42602807-Osiris-Reviews/

After I finally got my head around the mechanics, I started improving, expanding and collecting everything I could. It’s perfect for evenings when you just want to relax and unwind.
My favourite part? Definitely collecting boxes around the map — feels like a little mini-game inside the game (more boxes please, my addiction needs fuel 😂).
I recommend it, and now if you excuse me... I’m going back to play more 😎

Id like to recommend the game, but:

1~ UI/systems- the settings dont save. at all. music and sound reset each time, and you have to be IN a save to change them. The screen size is ONLY changable on the main menu, and sometimes changing it you have to select and unselect fullscreen for the size change to take effects.
The game always launches in a small window.

2~ gameplay- so the light bar is only changable while a seed is planted, and if you dont pre lower it before harvest on a finished grow, it is still set to that setting, next seed planted starts draining health immediately. You can quickly change it but youll probably lose 1-2% even on a quick change. For some reason on relaunch the plants are at a different growth stage than if you hitsave and quit (double saving just to be safe incase one of the save types was an issue, still does it.)
Sometimes boxes fall out of bounds? but not often. Reloading resets them, like it does almost everything in the game.
Plant growth is simple, move your dials into the sweet spots until the text is green, then wait (either speed up time or go collect boxes in the city at first, until you unlock more to do). Simple isnt bad, it just feels a little lackluster. Games like PlantTycoon was made in early 2000s and there was more to do for the plant care. But still, simple isnt bad and can work since you have to manage more types of things in other tabs.
(also, boxes glow faintly at night when your on the city map, so its easier to get them if your looking for one behind a tree or something)

Overall the game isnt bad, but it could use some more optimization updates before id change my review to good.
Id like to see a bit more variation on the models for the plants, to better match the pretty pictures of the processed bits. Settings being kept when launching the game, and not separated between two different scenes would be huge.
Long term ideas could be leaning more to something like PlantTycoon for plant growth and stages (if they wanted to be more detailed); making a little more depth to any of the already created systems to encourage long term play would be cool. I feel like the pricepoint is a bit high, 13$ for what is mainly sliders on a semi-idle game, that could be made with premade assets, kinda feels like a college project or proof of concept more than it does a full game.
I would by no means tag this as immersive sim, this is just a cute little growing Semi-idle simulation game. If your expecting to care for plants or mix or make things, this is not that. It is EXACTLY what you see in screenshots, thats it.

Id give it more of a neutral review if it wernt for the settings, that makes me not want to relaunch the game each time to be blasted with music suddenly. Its inconvient, but not bad.