Automobile Tycoon

Review

Have you ever thought of building a car company? How well will you do in designing, building and selling your creations around the world in this car manufacturing simulator from Silver Lemur Games.

You start a new game and can choose the difficulty, company name and logo, which year you want to start from (1905, 1920, 1940, 1960 or 1980) and whether or not you want to start with base components and car to help you on your way.  It’s recommended you choose either Europe or America as your home region, but you can also choose from South America, Asia, Africa or Australia and Oceania, but these regions are more difficult or challenging.

If you decide to have basic components and a car already for you, you’ll have a basic engine and chassis and a car ready to sell on the market. Having a car ready to sell on the market will help you bring in some cash while you start the development of new engines, chassis or cars.

When designing a chassis, there are several options to choose from to determine the type of chassis you want to build, like suspension, gears, brakes, frame, engine size and space, technology, materials, development time and development budget. Each of these options can be tinkered with so you can design the perfect chassis for you. There are also focus points which you can add to cost, weight, manufacturing and reliability, which will help with handling, comfort etc. You can get more focus points through having a longer development time and bigger development budget.

Development of the engine is pretty much the same as developing the chassis; just choose the options available to you, such as the number of cylinders etc. It will also tell you how much the overall cost to design the engine or chassis will be, and how long it will be until finished. Once you have your desired chassis and engine, it’s time to put them in a car, and again, just like with the chassis and engine, you choose the type of car to design and options available to you, such as interior and aerodynamics etc. The options available to you will change over time as you unlock more technology through research and will depend on which year you started your company.  Research will allow you bigger engines, better chassis, drum brakes, headlights, and everything will influence your design, safety, comfort, handing etc. There’s a list of researched technology available, and depending on which technology you want first, you can move them up the list to prioritise them.

Once your new car design is done it’s off to the factory, where you find the assembly line.  I started with two lines in 1905; I’m not sure if this changes on later start dates, but it didn’t matter as I only had one car to produce anyway.  I had four workers to start with, and upon opening the assembly line, it shows you how many you have at any time. It also tells you how efficient the line is, along with the skills and running costs.  As well as adding more assembly lines, you can upgrade them so that you can add more workers and thus produce more cars. Once you’ve selected your car on the assembly line, you’ll start building. After the end of the quarter it’ll tell you how many cars you’ve got left in storage; some may have already been sold.

Selling the cars, you’ve built is a must; it’s no good having cars still around gathering rust - you need that dollar to further expand your automobile industry, so get out of the office and get some selling done!  Here you’ll find news, reports of the last quarter etc, world map, help (tutorial) and a telephone. The world map shows the different regions in which you can sell your cars.  It also shows other information, like the percentage of your cars sold in any region, total market value last turn. To sell cars you’ll need a sales office in the region in which you want to sell; if things are selling very well, or if the old pennies are becoming a bit tight, you can always close a sale office.

The news will tell you of available new technology, finished developments etc, and the report has an overview of the company: all cars, our cars, demand, marketing, quarterly report and production (last turn), all to show you how you are progressing and which areas you can improve in. The telephone allows you to contact your secretary, board of directors, the bank, and your uncle. I spent most of my time calling my secretary asking for coffee but if you don’t like coffee she does do a lovely cuppa tea!

The game is played out over a quarter (one turn), so designing something which will take 4 quarters will take a year.   Bear this in mind and don’t go rushing to upgrade everything at once, especially if you haven’t got a car ready to sell, as bills still have to be paid for development, sales offices, idle assembly lines etc.

In the options you’ll find Gameplay - (FPS Counter), Quick Exit, Metric or Imperial measurement system, Autosave and the choice of five different languages. Video – Fullscreen, Borderless, Resizable Windowed, Vsync, Mouse Lock to Screen (Fullscreen Only) and Big UI. Audio – Master, Music, Effects volume controls, Mute. You can hover the mouse cursor over the settings for more information.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!