Rise of Industry | A Review
Hello everyone, I am the knower of capital, G.E.M.Simov, a being so well aware of all things related to the means of production that I am, myself, a mean of production, and I have come to tell you about the game “Rise of Industry”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Rise of Industry is a management game. In it, the Player takes on the leading role in a company, which starts off with a certain loan (in dollars), is then dropped into a large, roughly random but generated with particular specifics map, and is tasked with not going under. In fact, the task is to go above and beyond, to generate profit - as much of it as possible.
The game has a top-down perspective and is mostly played with the mouse, though there are a few (insufficient in quantity, though) key-bindings that allow for the use of the keyboard to aid with some tasks. However, oddly enough, pressing a keyboard button features a strange amount of input lag (or so it appears, at least in relation to the functions handled by the Alt and Tab buttons), which is not present when the Player accesses a drop-down menu and checks the desired function with the mouse.
That small issue aside, there are two ‘fields’ of play that must be mentioned. First is the map, the world, the large field that has lightly simulated terrain elevation, bodies of water, roads, cities and little batches of resources spread about here and there. This is the field that the Player will mostly consult when placing new buildings, building roads, doing terraforming and dealing with the logistics of their company. However, that ‘field’ is insufficient by itself, and is supplemented by the second ‘field’.
The second ‘field’ is a set of menus that pop up whenever the Player clicks certain buildings, which menus feature a number of options for action. These actions range from simply consulting a recipe or checking to see which town is buying which set of goods, to managing a certain building’s output, its destination, how it is run and whether it runs at all.
These menus are where a large portion of the game’s gameplay takes place - in fact, not just a large portion, but, rather, around 75% of the game’s gameplay. That would not be problematic under normal circumstances, but these are stacked with trouble. As an example, whenever the Player is invited to select a destination for the produce of a certain building, they can either navigate a drop-down menu and then look through a list of things with a horrible naming convention (as the game automatically names every building with ‘the type of building’ + ‘the number of building’, which naming convention breaks if the Player uses the duplicate function and then there are multiple ‘Crop Farm 13’ on the list with almost no means of discerning them from one another) OR they can navigate to the building they want to set as a destination and click on it… But they need to click a few times (or redo the whole process), because the game does not consistently understand what the Player wants to do and might just select the building as if it was normally clicked, rather than clicked as a means of setting a destination.
Already I have presented two relatively meager issues that could be dealt with via something else that the game attempts to do - automation - but the fact that they are present and are problematic, to such an extent that by dealing with one problem the Player runs into another, is indicative of a fault. Even if one were to argue that the game is meant to be played with automation (as seems to be the case, due to the fact that automation settings are turned on by default and must be disabled in the menu, and then the game must be ended and started anew, unless the Player wants to go through 50 or more buildings and manually turn off automation and set their destinations, a process that can take fifteen or more minutes at a time), it is then odd that manual play is allowed but is so undercooked.
However, automation is broken. Some things are automated, but others are not and must be handled manually. Some things, when automated, stumble and break - in particular, supply lines and logistics - because the way the main (and only) engine for automation, Warehouses, works is based on proximity, so the closest Warehouse will be where everything goes. That creates impossibilities for a Warehouse to handle all the goods being funneled into it, until at one point it runs out of trucks it can send out and simply stops all processes until its already departed trucks return.
This could be addressed, but it actually cannot. The game does feature a means of handling traffic, but it is exceptionally rudimentary and is very inefficient, in the sense that the one-way roads can be useful, but they require exorbitant amounts of planning to be set up right, leading into unfathomable and inescapable traffic jams.
The game also struggles when the Player needs to deal with actually managing their resources and their resource consumers. As an example, the Player can take a look at how much is being produced by a certain building, and can get a summary of how much goes in and goes out, but has no means of actually affecting that, except by reducing the building’s efficiency… Which still does not actually solve the issue at hand, instead simply increasing the amount of time the building needs to produce a product.
However, the building still consumes the same amount of material for said product - and that’s exceptionally troublesome when talking about farms. Farms are buildings that come with up to 5 additional pseudo-buildings, which can not be selected or interacted with in any way aside from destroying them. A farm’s input (that being the amount of water required by the farm to produce whatever it would produce) increases with each pseudo-building, but aside from disabling the entire farm and every pseudo-building, there is no actual means of managing intake and use. Once a pseudo-building is built, it can only be stopped from working by being destroyed (at a loss for the Player).
So, in the game about managing, in which a building can have little dependent buildings that are ‘managed’ through its own menu, those same buildings cannot be managed. The fact that the Player cannot go into the building’s menu and select one of the pseudo-buildings and disable it is bothersome, sometimes gets in the way, and is indicative of more issues - the same as those hinted at before.
Not a lot of how the game is played was actually mentioned, though, due to the immensity of its issues. As previously stated, the Player gets a loan - a few million dollars - and every in-game day their company loses a certain amount, because that loan is being repaid, with interest. Aside from that, the Player spends money by building structures, the goal of said structures being to either generate a resource to sell or a resource to use in the generation of a product, again for sale or for use, OR buildings that deal with logistics and handle pollution.
Every building the Player builds has an upkeep cost, which is present even when the building is disabled. That cost is extracted from the Player’s money at the start of each month. Additionally, the Player pays for each truck that departs from a building - and these trucks either bring the product to a town for sale, or to another building for use in the generation of a more sophisticated product.
The goal, as stated, is to avoid going under, which is accomplished by paying attention to the markets in the nearest city (as the price for travel to other cities, via truck, is high enough to almost make it pointless to send to more distant settlements) and providing the goods that are being demanded. The Player can also spend money on Research and Development, which happens by opening up a menu, selecting a thing to research, and then waiting. Over the duration that must be spent in expectancy, the Player spends a certain amount of money, each month, on RnD. That value is static at first, but research can be done to allow for different quantities to be invested.
Whenever something is researched, it becomes available for production (or something is upgraded, such as the capacity of buildings or the speed of vehicles). Lastly, money can be spent by buying from the state (if the state is accessible in the current map, as some maps can spawn with an inaccessible state, though the game does not account for that and continuously treats the state as though it is accessible, rendering events and opportunities useless and broken) OR by engaging in auctions for certain boons.
The auctions are either solitary - for the Player - or against other companies, manned by the computer. This is one of the more ‘interesting’ ideas that the game has - featuring other entities that the Player must compete with - but it falls flat on account of the fact that these companies are not threatening and are simply a means of expanding one’s operations very quickly.
The way they work is that, whenever a game starts, the Player places their company’s HQ somewhere, in a city’s region. Then, if there are any AIs, they place their HQs in other, unoccupied city regions, and start going at it, building structures, road infrastructure and generating profits. They will attempt to compete with the Player on auctions, but are not exceptionally driven. The most interesting thing is that the Player can be affected by them selling their goods and satisfying the demand of the market, though that rarely happens due to the fact that the AI will focus on a certain set of products in the RnD tree, which appears to take into account what the Player is doing. At the very least, I have not observed the AI going down the same path as me.
The way to deal with the AI is by buying up stock in their company. Each company has 10 shares, and upon obtaining all 10, the Player buys it out completely, and all of its structures, roads and even RnD are absorbed by the Player. The unfortunate part here is that the Player also appears to have shares, but the AI just does not buy them. Either it can’t, or it does not start buying shares until exceptionally late into the game, by which point the Player would have probably absorbed more than one other company and would have become unstoppable, in a financial sense.
So, a number of things have been said about Rise of Industry and its Gameplay. In particular, those issues with its menus, the fact that it features automation that does not work, the lackluster implementation of a plethora of mechanics… But a lot more has been left unstated.
The most bothersome thing here is that the game does not like the Player’s keyboard. As an example - and a striking one at that - the Player can designate how much of a building’s product can be sent to a certain destination. The quantity can be anywhere between 1 and 90, and the way the precise quantity is selected is by… Clicking a + sign.
The Player, on their computer, with their number keys, is made to click a + sign repeatedly, so many times that it becomes almost painful and bothersome, because the game does not feature the functionality of clicking the number and simply writing the desired one. That’s baffling and exceptionally bothersome. It is not something that, on its own, can ruin the game, but it adds up.
The already mentioned things, and those unmentioned ones, add up and create a storm of miffing unpleasantness. The decisions made in the creation of Rise of Industry are baffling. A management game that does not feature context menus, a management game that requires the Player to cycle through countless, instead of simply giving them a huge list of options to scroll through, does not seem to be the right call.
It is bothersome, that’s just the thing. Playing Rise of Industry is bothersome, because the game teases the Player with what it could be. It could be exceptionally entertaining and fun to just figure out a humongous industry, but the act of getting it done is excruciating. It could be engaging to an unhealthy degree to try and optimize things, but the way it is done is painful and unpleasant.
Playing it is not a big chore, on account of the automation, but only up to a certain point, a surface level - the first hour, maybe two of each game. However, once things get rolling, and the Player is managing hundreds of buildings, and is handed insufficient means of getting the information they need or the options of handling the issues that might arise… The game teeters off and even falls into a pit once the later stages arrive. That, coupled with an exceedingly long amount of time spent in the loading screen whenever the Player loads their game, the strangely lengthy pause of up to 10 seconds whenever they save their progress, makes the prospect of playing Rise of Industry unappealing. Thinking about it is often more fun than playing it, which is not a good thing to say about a game.
2/3
Presentation
Rise of Industry is a marvel to look at. It has this peculiar low-poly appearance, which naturally involves many edges and corners, while also holding a certain cartoon quality to it. On top of that, there is a very decent level of detail added to all the models that appear on the field, allowing for impressive zooming (both in and out), which holds appeal in many regards.
The game is a top-down strategy/management game, though, and so the things on display are largely secondary to the most important thing - menus. While the field and the world that Rise of Industry presents look very good and are absolutely gorgeous - splendid colors, a toy-esque vibe to all the things - the same can not be earnestly said about the menus.
At first glance, of course, they are also very pleasant to look at. Rounded edges, colors here and there (similarly gentle as those of the scenery), a variety of icons and visual indicators - quite convenient. However, the more a person looks at them, the more they use them, they come to realize that they are not all that good.
That is where the game runs into issues. The menus are… Insufficient. They provide some information, but not enough information. They provide options for more information to be seen, but not enough of it. They provide the option for the Player to do certain things, but then they also do not allow the Player to do everything that they need to do.
An example would be that the game’s menus provide information on how many cycles a certain object will perform when it delivers objects, but there is no explanation of the term ‘cycle’, which is relegated to just the game’s tutorial. That said, the tutorial in question is relatively useful. It gives the Player an introduction into the game’s mechanics, but only does so in a very rudimentary manner, while also skipping over a decently large swathe of the game’s other mechanics, which are going to be exceptionally important.
In essence, the game is very… Lacking in polish. It is difficult to put into words, due to the fact that it is mostly related to a feeling that the Player gets, as well as the utility of it. Rise of Industry has a Presentation issue that affects Gameplay, as previously mentioned - the menus are not enough, especially when the game goes into its later stages.
In those cases, the game’s tutorial is also not enough. The Player is not taught how to deal with certain things, they are not taught how to engage with certain mechanics, and they do not have enough information provided by the game’s menus (of which there are many, but at the same time it feels as though they are not enough and as though there are a lot of useless menus).
That’s a major part of the problem - the game’s menus are very pretty and nice to look at, but they are vapid and clunky, unusable when it comes to efficiency and poorly performing in regards to User Experience. As stated, this is more of a Gameplay issue, but it stems from the Presentation, which is dreadful. The fact that everything looks like it is a phone app does not make things easier - in fact, it seems to be part of the reason why there is an issue.
Instead of providing the Player with massive spreadsheets that feature lots of buttons and context-sensitive menus, the game just showers the Player in small menus that don’t work all that well, and when it does show the Player a Spreadsheet, it is completely pointless, offering only two meager options which are barely useful.
Then there’s the issue of User Interface (UI) elements just blocking other bits of the interface and then being impossible to remove, thus making it impossible to see what is beneath them, due to the way they are styled. On top of that, there is such an intense (and immense) quantity of UI elements that constantly pop up and stay on the screen until dismissed, but they keep popping up so it’s almost impossible to get rid of them for a reasonable amount of time (though it could be argued that they appear due to the fact that the Player has failed at optimizing their assembly line)
So what comes of this? The game looks very pretty, but that winds up coming at the expense of the game not working all that well and obscuring things from the Player. It also sounds quite nice - a pleasant set of musical tracks, very punchy, bubbly sound effects - but that does not manage to stop it from being… Well, ultimately overburdened, cluttered and messy.
2/3
Story
Rise of Industry has no story, which is to be expected out of a simulation game like this one. Of course, it allows for vast amounts of emergent storytelling to take place, what with the random events, the rival corporations and the choices the Player makes while running their own company, but, ultimately, it is a very unimpressive emerging story, due to the fact that it is always one that ends in the same fashion. Thus, I am afraid I can not give this game any points on this front.
0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? When first I started playing it, I thought to myself that it has the potential to be a scintillatingly complex management game that would allow for silly amounts of optimization… But, alas, it wound up not being that. It left me more bothered than pleased, annoyed by the fact that the automation was finicky and that manual addressing of the issues was far too obtuse. So NO, Rise of Industry does not get the legendary point. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. Rise of Industry is a management game that does not live up to the expectations it builds for the Player. It can work as an entry-level management game, for folks who are looking to get into the genre, but it is definitely lacking the tools required to handle, properly, the sophistication it attempts to grasp. For fans of the genre, it might be a funky little romp - if only because of how pretty it looks - but its issues outweigh the positives.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, a saddening example of things that could have benefited from a bit more… A bit more of something. Anything!