At the beginning of May, the developers Dapper Penguin Studios released their first game, Rise of Industry. This is a complex strategic tycoon game, as they self-describe it, in which you will have to build a city and keep it running while constantly adapting to the events that are happening. So eager as I was to start my own town, I dived right in to see if Dapper Penguin Studios released a game that’s worth playing or if it feels more like the sunken city of Atlantis.
- Visual style: The graphics that are used in the game are 3D-graphics. Yet everything is designed in such a simplistic way that something will probably start to look funny. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and in my opinion, it charms the game, providing it a unique look. And when I was playing it, I wanted to keep building and building in order to see how everything looks, since it worked like some sort of charm. So one can easily say that the developers definitely made the right choice when picking the graphical style!
- Different modes: Another fun factor about the game is that there are a couple of different game modes. Now, in almost every simulation game, you will have the same ones; Career, Sandbox & Scenarios. That also goes for Rise of Industry. But what’s special about these game modes? You can set everything as you want it to be. In Career, you get to pick how many AIs there are in the game. In Scenarios, you can set your own challenges that you want to achieve. The game doesn’t offer long gameplay, but this way, it manages to keep it fun and challenging.
- Original concept: So with the two points I mentioned above, Rise of Industry offers an original concept. For example, I want to achieve certain goals really fast, and now I get the chance to make it harder every time I complete my challenge, giving a nice satisfying feeling. And I’m sure I’m not the only one out there. Also, the fact that you literally have to micromanage every little thing in the games makes it fun to play. And if you stop paying attention for some time, there is a big chance so you lose your profit.
- Tutorial: The game offers a tutorial but that’s all the good I can say about that. It has a lot of steps you need to complete and will probably leave you behind with more questions then you had before launching the game. Yes, they pay attention to every aspect of the game but in a vague way that’s not really helping. At certain points, it felt more like they are telling you to do this, then this, and don’t forget this. But not why you are doing it. So, when you launch the real game, you are still gonna be like ‘’why am I doing this?’’. I think they can fix this easily by paying a bit more attention to the ‘why’ aspect of it and then it will actually be a good one that everyone can follow. I hope.
- Tech tree: While playing the game, you will have to use the tech tree in order to research different things that will improve the way you make money. Now, this is also a fun aspect since you can really focus on the things that you want to build. But in the end, it can also be a big pile of unorganized things that will make you confused. There are so many options to research, maybe even too many, and you really have to take the time to find out what everything is used for before you start the research. If you are like me, you just want to play the game and don’t waste a lot of time reading and studying stupid unnecessarily researches and what they do.
- Tricky to learn: Rise of Industry isn’t your typical game where you just know what to do and how to do it right from the start. It will most likely take a few tries to learn a bit about every single thing that you encounter while playing. The cause for this is probably the lack of info in the tutorial and that there’s a lot of information to keep in mind. I particularly found it hard to keep every dot connected and keep all the different industries running.
- Easy to beat: Where the game is hard to learn, it is really easy to finish. Once you have a product developed so that you are making the money, you just repeat and repeat to make more. It also takes away the fun a bit, since there isn’t another challenge coming up and you just have to wait it out. I can understand if people are like yeah finally I beat it. But I think it isn’t meant to be like this simple… Now it’s just: struggle, struggle, struggle, making money, you won. They should change that.
CONCLUSION
Score: 75%
Rise of Industry can become a fun and popular game. In my opinion, the developers from Dapper Penguin Studios just need to look at the game once more very very closely and listen to the feedback that they are getting from the players. Like I already mentioned, the tutorial could use a rework to make it even better and so there are a couple of things that need to improve. But as of where this the game is standing now, they have a really nice basis to keep continuing and developing this game.
Developer: Dapper Penguin Studios Publisher: Kasedo Games
Played on: PC
Perfect for: If you want to build a town and make profits
Steam game store link: click here
