I remember the Tycoon era of gaming fondly, even though I was just a kid. Transport Tycoon, Rollercoaster Tycoon, even SimGolf and SimPark, all held my attention for extended periods of time.
We’ve come a long way since then, and while gems like The Guild 2 did keep me busy for a while, I’ve rather lost my love for the business sim genre. Until now.
The game that really shouldn’t work, but somehow does
I discovered Big Ambitions thanks to a happy accident, and the premise sounds painfully boring. You need to start businesses, adjust pricing, manage employee schedules, source products, and keep tweaking until you get your business as profitable as possible.
That’s not all, though. You also have to keep your car fuelled up and repaired, and keep your in-game character fed and happy. This means going to the gym, taking showers, watching TV, and even playing computer games.
Doesn’t that sound incredibly dull?
And if you’re going to maximize profits, you’ll need to build stronger supply chains, too, which means renting warehouses, hiring purchasing officers, logistics managers, and maintaining import inventory levels.
Yet, somehow, the game isn’t dull at all. I picked it up expecting it to be a bit of a boring grind, which it was at first, and then somehow 50 hours whooshed by, and I can’t put this game down.
It’s immensely satisfying when you figure out a business model that works. Even better when it’s repeatable across districts, and you can just pump out one major franchise after another. I can see that it will soon become boring once everything is running a little too smoothly and all I really have to do is the aforementioned gym and TV loop, but until then, I’m having a grand time of things.
It’s hard to understand why it works so well
I’ve given it quite a bit of thought, and it’s actually tough to articulate what it is that makes this game so much fun. The incremental nature of business is always a winner, of course. But it’s also the fact that the game doesn’t hold your hand too tightly if you don’t want it to.
That way, you get to figure things out yourself and feel like a genius when you do.
There’s always something to chase, too. Whether that’s another new store, a chain of burger shops, or a high-end apartment decorated with only the most luxurious items and a Ferrari.
Then you’ve got this leaderboard with all your rivals on it. As your income goes up, you slowly climb the leaderboard — another immensely satisfying feature. Speaking of rivals, they also attack you from time to time. Nothing crazy, just normal business attacks.
They’ll try to price you out of a certain local market, open up a chain of stores for no other reason than to tank demand and strangle your stores, and stuff like that. It sounds painful, but once you build up a bit of a cash reserve, you can pretty easily survive these attacks without closing down stores.
And, once you reach a certain point, you don’t even feel these attacks in the slightest anymore.
I do wish that we could launch attacks of our own on our rivals, spending X amount of money to see how much damage we can do to them. Maybe that is in the game. I’ve been surprised a lot, and I’m still not done with the tutorial even after 50 hours, so feel free to let me know in the comments.
Overall though, I just wanted to share my surprise at finding such a fun gem of a game behind such a boring premise. If you’re into business sims of any kind, definitely give Big Ambitions a go.
It only recently launched into 1.0, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to come yet.
