Business Tycoon Review

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Ever heard of Stardock? Back in '98 they released this great strategy game called Entrepreneur. It wasn't the ordinary strategy game though, as it evolved around business as warfare instead of the traditional "kill-and-destroy". Despite the addictive gameplay and genius strategic elements, not a great many people played the game. Even so, it received good reviews and reports almost all over the web. Now, two years later, Stardock is ready with the sequel, this time with a new name - Business Tycoon.

Tested and written by Anders "Twilight" Steinlein, published 29th June 2000

As already said, Business Tycoon is a business game. Your goal is to become the ultimate business tycoon, by building up your company to become the definite market leader in a given industry. The industries available in the game as of now are the computer-, car- and aircraft industries. Even though these should keep you busy for some time, Stardock is known for its great support. Expect more industries, maps and general gameplay updates from time to time…

Ok, let's talk about the game itself... When starting a new game, the first thing you do is creating your company. You do this by choosing the name and colour of your company, but most importantly its speciality - which can be production, marketing or research. With that done, all left is to set up the game itself, which obviously evolves around choosing computer opponents, difficulty, the industry and such.

As the game starts, the first thing you should do is performing market research. This gives you access to new territories - or regions - in which to sell your products, as well as their demographics and statistics. The demographics are an important element of the game, and some regions might want a specific attribute in your product, while other regions might want another. These product-attributes are specific to each industry while 'prestige' is a general one, which appears in them all. In addition to the demographics, you have also got access to some general statistics of a region, as barely mentioned. What some of these statistics tell you is your workers ability in labour, marketing and research in the region, as well as the cost of living and recreation available. These statistics are called employee statistics. In addition, Stardock has provided you with some more general statistics such as the wealth of a region, which affects the demand of your product in the territory.

Getting back to the flow of the game, you send out sales executives to make your product available in the region he occupies as well as some of the surrounding regions. You might call these sales executives for the games "armies" as you send him out to "conquer" new land. You start the game with a single one, but as your income grows you'll attract more of them. In some cases though, they alone aren't enough. Your products might not meet the demographics of the target region, or the people there might not afford to pay the price you demand. In these cases, sending marketing campaigns to the scene will probably be a good idea. Depending on what kind of campaign you create (promoting your product or demeaning an opponent), you'll be the one getting a gain.

In the beginning of the game you start out with a single site (that is headquarters), which just houses a "garage" where your products are produced, and a small sales office to push your products in the region. As the demand for your product increase you should upgrade your site not to fall behind. Buildings you can build mainly include factories to produce products, marketing offices where marketing campaigns are created and research offices where you upgrade- and research new technologies to improve your product. Additional buildings available are sales offices to help you sell products, recreation centres to enhance your employees morale, training centres to increase your employees effectiveness, company stores to decrease salary expenses, and finally - intelligence buildings to receive more statistics and inside-information about your competitors.

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