Business Tycoon

You might have played, 'corporate empire games' before in "Detroit" or "Motor City" as in cars to "Air Bucks" for aircraft industries. Unlike them, this game focuses solely on the business side in kin with military style-"Risk" or "Centurion: Defender of Rome" minus the battle sequences or hands-on product testing.

Business Tycoon is an update on the original "Entrepreneur" game that goes beyond the single industry of 'computers' to include 'airplanes' and 'automobiles' in a more refined and a less cluttered interface. Players can select a chosen industry and area of expertise from marketing and manufacturing thus doubling your output or engineering for quicker research. Up to seven computer-controlled opponents each their own artificial intelligence or against a friend on LAN IPX network and Stardock's Internet gaming server.

The game begins at the infancy of your industry, and witness the evolution of technology. Map view shows your starting region, where you branch out to neighboring countries by researching them to open up new markets. A series of demographics highlighting each region by different colors illustrate exactly the market share, sales and leader to level of distribution and penetration. You can also setup new distribution centers, sites, and send a salesperson or marketing campaign to any available regions. Useful to improving you're dominance.

Your main site contains a small factory and sales office; these can be enlarged to increase production. Other buildings you construct are - 'Research center' for advanced technologies for cheaper and more reliable products; 'Marketing office' to assist in greater brand awareness and market perception covering print, radio and television media's; 'Training office' increases factory efficiency and in the long run reduce costs to 'Staff café' improving staff morale. All require allocated personnel taking a share of your gross revenue.

Most things are done internally with little intervention. Research projects need to be initialed and are appointed in any order, provided they are selectable as more engineers employed the quicker they are completed. Factory works by itself after recruiting workers, no need to order or source parts for assembly. Goods are sold directly to the market. Sales statistics lets you modify a products price, and offers insight into the number of units as determined by the number of factory workers, being: produced, sold or stored inventory to demand of your products.

Future world events occur by the way of 'direct action cards' usable to enhance labor, marketing, research resources or underground deals has destructive consequences for your opponents like strikes or pushing competitor products off the shelves, political bonuses in form of government grants to unfair favors.

Humor takes some of the seriousness out of the game and adds another dimension to it. Jokes about monkeys are quite common.

In order to win the game, you need to a get the right balance of price and performance with the greatest market share to outwit your opponents. The best product may not necessarily achieve a victory if the price is too high or insufficient production to meet demand.

The next game in series is "The Corporate Machine".