RiseofIndustryisfundamentally
about supply and demand. There are
a handful of towns of various sizes
spread across the map, each of which
has two to four stores which will buy
a certain good. Your job is to fulfil
that demand. This can
be as simple as mining
some coal and shipping
it directly to the
hardware store, or as
complicated as the
pizza, a puzzle of a
product that requires
mills producing flour,
vegetable farms and a
dairy producing cheese.
A great deal of thought has gone
into refining all of these interactions.
Buildings thunk down satisfyingly,
trucks chug along adorably and even
the menu buttons click pleasingly.
Clearly a lot of effort has been put
into ensuring that the game feels
fundamentally pleasing to play.
I said the game looks gorgeous,
and this extends to a simple butelegantUI.Iwasparticularlyafanof
the little bubbles that pop up to show
what product a building is producing
and how far along it is. This, along
with other icons make it easy to
diagnose problems like disconnected
roads or too many
products in storage. In
addition to this helpful
UI, the game pushes
you toward useful
outside sources of
information, with links
to both the wiki and a
helpful YouTube
tutorial right there on
the start menu.
Eventually things get a little bit
more complicated, with the player
getting access to heavier trucks,
trains, boats and even zeppelins to
haul products and set up long
distance supply chains across the
map. The only problem here is I
didn’t feel enormous pressure to use
them. You see, resources are spread
so evenly across the map it seems justas easy to build a new manufacturing
facility near your destination as it is
to set up railway line. Perhaps
someone better at capitalism than me
can point out how much I’d be
shaving off my margins delivering my
mutton by zeppelin, but at the
moment I’m mostly doing it because
mutton zeppelins are cool.
It doesn’t help that the
“campaign” is what I would usually
consider a sandbox mode, while the
actual “sandbox” is just the same
thing but with infinite money and
everything unlocked. There are AI
competitors, but they don’t seem to
add much beyond being a nuisance
when they buy exclusive rights to
build in an area I was targeting.
There’s no real ability to undercut
your competition by offering a
cheaper product or better marketing,
instead the different corporations
mostly stay out of each other’s way so
that everyone can keep making
money, in exactly the way capitalism
isn’t supposed to work, but does.Capitalism
How much you’ll enjoy Rise of
Industry is largely going to depend on
how capable you are of making your
own fun. The interactions are very
strong, but the only goal the
developers offer is creating an
endgame product (a car, a computer
or a ready meal). There’s no real
capacity for expression and creativity
either, one supply chain looks much
like another, and the player is chasing
efficiency, not aesthetics.
I got a good few hours of fun out
of Rise of Industry, but ultimately
once that time had passed I found I
simply wasn’t interested in creating a
slightly more profitable brick factory
than my last one, perhaps I’m simply
notenoughofacapitalist.NeedtoKNow
What is it?
Minimalist factory
builder
EXPECttOPaY
£20
DEvElOPEr
DapperPenguin
PublishEr
KasedoGames
rEviEWEDOn
Intel i5, 16gb RAM,
NvidiaGTX 970
MultiPlaYEr
No
link
http://www.riseofindustry.
com72
Beautiful style,
polished interactions,
but ultimately it just
runs out of things to
do after a whilevErDiCtI’m mostly
doing it because
mutton
zeppelins
are coolT
he first thing you’ll notice upon playing Rise of Industry is
that it’s absolutely gorgeous. The boxy shapes and flat colours
of the low-poly style are a perfect fit for the city/factory
builder genre. This, combined with bright colours and
sticker-like icons, makes the game looks less like a real city
and more like a child’s play set. Unfortunately that’s also how the game
plays, like a toy. Something that’s fun to play with, but lacks direction.ConstruCtIon KIt
RISeoFINdUStRY is a beautiful
but aimless sandbox. By Tom Hatfield
PIzza PaRtY How to assemble a tier 3 food
Cow
This cattle ranch
produces milk for
the cheese.wheat
Cows need wheat to
eat, and we also need
it for flour.FloUR
This mill grinds the
wheat you’ve grown
into flour.doUgh
I don’t know why I
need a whole factory
to add water to flour.VegetableS
The simplest step, a
topping. No
pineapple allowed.wateR
This keeps our crops
watered and our
cows hydrated.CheeSe
Milk from the cows
goes in here to get
turned into cheese.PIzza
The final, hopefully
delicious, product
comes from here!waRehoUSe
The warehouse
sucks in resources
and dishes them out.zePPelINFIeld
We’re delivering our
pizzas by blimp,
because why not?RiseofIndustry
rEviEW