The controller simply doesn’t offer enough precision, and it becomes a real problem when the large clickable icons that represent rooms begin to overlap each other in busier offices. It’s clear that nothing has been done to optimise the game for console. Tycoon games always seem to be better suited to mouse and keyboard, and that applies to Mad Games Tycoon too. It would have been nice to have known that that was an option from the start, instead of just stumbling across it by chance. I didn’t do that, and ended up not realising I could even buy other companies until 20 years into the game. It’s worth spending a good chunk at the start of the game clicking everything you can just to see what it is. You’ll have to find out pretty much everything on your own. You’re told a few things at the very start, before being dropped in at the deep end and told to get on with it. The only thing it’s missing is a decent tutorial. Just because you’ve nailed the formula for the perfect RPG doesn’t mean you can automatically go on to make a best-selling FPS.Īll-in-all it’s a remarkably deep simulator. This differs for every genre too, and it stops the game from ever becoming too easy. Finding which topics fit together, and exactly how much attention you should pay to factors like graphics or gameplay, takes time. In that sense, Mad Games Tycoon encourages experimentation and learning from your mistakes. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was onto a real winner, only to be destroyed by the critics and given Worst Game of the Year.
Of course, a great idea doesn’t always translate into a great game. Games that combine the apocalypse and dating, or American Football with animals, are par for the course in Mad Games Tycoon and it’s brilliant. The amount of variety really allows you to make any game you can think of, no matter how mental it sounds. Playing around with all this stuff makes for a great time. And there are close to 40 features that can be researched in order to make the best games possible. All the most popular genres are included. There are hundreds of topics to research, from fairies to football and everything in between. It’s just as well then that there are so many options to experiment with. And this is where you’ll be spending most of your time.
But the main focus of Mad Games Tycoon is making games.