Can you design the ultimate game?
Mad Games Tycoon pits you the ultimate question…can you make the best games and become a successful publisher/developer? You begin your career in a garage during the 1980s and as you hopefully make more money you can move to better locations, designing better games with more staff at the helm. You also work on researching new tech to use in your engine, as well as choosing to purchase licenses to use for your games. There’s a lot to get your head round at first, that’s for sure.
The downside is that the in-game tutorial does little to nothing to explain all these aspects and instead shows you how to create an office and how to begin designing a game, after that you’re essentially on your own, leaving you to figure out what makes a good game, how to design engines or consoles and just the basic merits of game design.
The interface itself is reminiscent of The Sims as you place rooms and items in your garage/office, while you issue staff to certain desks and they can work collectively on one project or on separate ones. It takes some getting used to, but it becomes second nature after a while, and I love the parody names of games companies like Rore and Akklaim.
Visually, the game is a bit basic, but it works well overall. I did come across a few bugs with placing objects but there has been at least 1 patch since launch so I’m sure any issues will be worked out.
The Verdict
While having perhaps the least informative tutorial I’ve seen, Mad Games Tycoon is a decent sim of running a gaming business…when you finally work out the fundamentals. It won’t win any awards for originality or visuals but does enough to be an enjoyable experience.