Industry Manager: Future Technologies Reviews

I've played this game for a while and would say its worth it. It does have some issues but it is pretty good for a economy simulation. And the devs. keep working on it. Improvements are recognizable. So far if youre looking for a nice little game for some hours Industry Manager: Future Technologies is worth a try. Pro: - Complex - Further development - Versatile - Nice micromanagement - Graphics are ok for this kind of game - Sound is fitting the game but it would be nice to have more different tracks - Price for the game is fine for me because the devs keep working on it Con: - Badly needs an overworked logistical system. I do have way to many unnecessary issues due to lack of intelligent ressource distribution. - You do need a pen and a paper if you're in to micromanagement. If you change sth. you do need to whrite it down which ressources are effected by the change. A tool to compare before and after would be great - It really needs a better overview for your competitors. The further the progress then less youre able to figure out which competitor is selling which goods. - Company overview of ressource management ist also missing. Yet again. The further the progress then more likely youll get lost due to micromanagement

I have tried every different way to play on easy, game is too difficult to make money, yet alone compete against AI, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY

I'm telling you the premise of this game is awesome. Actual gameplay not so much. I researced everything--that was a long process. When I finally got done researching I tried to develop different products. For example I tried to create a cold vaccine after I set up a flu vaccine. The cold vaccine wouldn't take. Neither would several other products, including silver rings--a not so hard a process. It wouldn't take either. The screen showed the cold vaccine present, as well as the silver ring. It showed no inventory in the warehouse of either. Meanwhile my costs soared because of all the employees I had. As much as I would love to recommend this game, I can't. The game is just broken.

I like this game, it's a challenge, it's fun, you must manage production in a unique way, however there is one part of this game that makes me put it down every time. The game is a bit broken in the customer demand department. I'll provide an example: Say you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building a production system, you place the factory, you place the farm or the mine. You purchase staff, set up production lines, move products from A to B and sell at towns. Sounds good, however, it seems the price customers are willing to pay is directly linked to your production price. If it costs you $100 to make a good, and you sell it for $130, you'll get some demand and sell some stuff, but it will marginally outweigh your costs to run the whole operation. Now option two is to buy stuff from the global market, ship it to your warehouse, then ship it to town to sell. Sounds good also. The largest fundamental difference between these two methods is the pricing customers are willing to pay. If I make Silver Jewellery myself in a factory, it will cost me say $400 to produce one, and customer will NOT buy it if I set the sale price to $800 - But I can buy Silver Jewellery from the global market for $1100/each and sell them for $1500 and customer's will lap it up like it's nobody's business. The margin from just buying from the global market it 10 times better, no staff, no labour, no extra transport costs, no building costs. For the same item, of the same quality, manufacturing ANYTHING isn't worth playing the game. It's just a buy/sell simulation with the labelling of industrial practices.

Very Cool game its alot like the Capitalism games if you're old enough to know those. you basicly set up production lanes of stuff you would like to make. its a abit fuzzy at first cause its abit overwhelming what to do. but give it some time (if your a impatient person this is not for you!) when you get the hang of it its a very addictive game!.

This is a very nice game. I can see myself playing this for a long time to come. It's sort of like Capitalism II, if you ever played that. You can buy land, make manufacturing chains, research, sell products, buy/sell stock, get loans, compete with other computer players, etc. The reserach tree is pretty nice as well. Not only can you research new products, but you can improve your existing ones along with the maximum production, maximum workers, research lowering costs, etc. There are many upgrades, and products to research/manufacture; I love this part of the game. I do recommend spending about 10 mins watching 1 tutorial when you first start; it saves you a lot of time, and you get the hang of everything fairly easy after that. One tip: on each production and warehouse building you have to tell it to get certain ingredients, or send certain final products to the warehouse. Also from the warehouse you can click on each product, click global market (or whatever it's called), and then sell a certain amount and click 'repeat' to sell a certain amount each day (1st option to sell). The 2nd option to sell (better option) is to click on the construction areas in a city, build a building that lets you sell your products in your own store, and add those products one by one to sell (2nd option; this option automatically sells your products.) The AI (computer players) is the one main area where I'd give a negative right now, but I also know they are working on fixing this as it's in their 'known issues' thread in the forums. As it stands the computer players go bankrupt after a while; they keep it entertaining for a bit, but then they one by one go down. It's still fun to play, but will be much better once they start playing better. Also it'd be cool to see cities develop, but I believe the only thing that changes with them is the population figure, and when corporations build their store in a pre-set area. Outside of the cities though is where all the manufacturing chains are built, and it's a pretty good sized map for you and the computer players to build in. There are random events that happen such as: the bank decides not to lend for a while to anyone, fungus growing on crops causing production to halt, worker strikes, etc. It's a nice touch. Also I just found out in my 2nd game of play that there are random rewards/challenges for example for researching something specific, or producting certain goods. You can also setup winning conditions, 3 map size options, etc. which are nice. This game is extremly fun for me. If you like Business type games with research trees, building upgrades, etc. this is a defnite buy imo. You do have to look at the production trees, etc. to see what is required though for each product, so I wouldn't recommend this for children obviously though (unless you have one of those kids really into these types of games. :)

First off for context I played a LOT of capitalism and capitalism2 a LOT... I like the genre, not many do lol. So I'm happy another corporate economic sim has popped up, I have seen reviews comparing it to Capitalism2 but sadly calling it another business sim is about as close of a comparison you might muster. This will be a long review so apologies now. I like the game so far but it has a few problems, some critical, a few glaring issues and many smaller problems that are managable I guess... I will go over the problems I find with the game in hopes of the development will continue and flesh this game out, although being in full release mode makes me worry... a lot. Maybe they should have hired me to look over their game before release? Can't just be me... I will use Capitalism as examples and sorry if that gets repetitive. Critical game flaw #1: The AI is incompetent. Needs some serious programming revamping. Need to react, compete and be more aggressive. Example; Just now a ran a few years by with a simple retailer tactic, buying software from the port and selling in in trade centers (malls) from my warehouse and I'm making millions within a month, R&D Personal electronics factory buy another warehouse and sell personal electronics from the port, R&D Home Electronics buy another warehouse and sell Home electronics from the port and now I'm making even more, R&D Automotive and buy another warehouse and sell cars from you guessed it the port... Anyways after the 4 factory types I have a balance of over 3 billion, 4 sectors with only 2 R&D building, 4 warehouses and 5 Stores. And what do the 4 AI guys have? Example: they have infrastucture to produce a family car (with a quality of 1 <- yeah 1!), and have 1 store open in thier mall and have sold 46 cars. (I have sold thousands of cars already) All they would have to do is compete with me via the port and I'd crumble. Well no I'd have to find other markets. Critical flaw #2 Port and Port Quality Even though the AI does not buy from the port if they did they would run into another problem... 100 Quality can be selected... So any type of product quality can be trumped by the port... You spend all the time R&D Money to get top quality and any joe bob can buy from the port and compete with you. Once you R&D whatever factory type, you now have access to buy ALL products from the port, hi tech items like a hover car? should we be able to buy futuristic products off the get go??? It is a bad flaw... these items should be rewards for years of hard earned R&D no? The port needs to be similar to C2 varying poor quality and sporadic supply issues... Critical flaw #3 Product Quality So you can R&D 4 levels of quality to reach 100 quality. That's it. So can your competition. so you all have 100 quality. Yeah you can R&D the other producivity bonuses to the max to cut costs to compete? sure but so can they... in the end there is no more ways to compete. (not ehat the AI does ok ok lol) R&D needs to work similar to Capitalism where there is a "cutting edge" that pushes the quality boundry up and up where only the best research budget gets you the highest quality and can make or break you. (You can add in the breaktrough bonus. and the reverse where you make your product worse and piss off your customers.) Glaring problem; Factory productivity So you spend 3 million on this factory, R&D all the productivity bonuses and pay for the upgrades, and you can only hire 40 guys? and you can only produce 10-160 units depending on the product? Demand can be in the thousands for some products, and did I mention the PORT? it has thousands available each day for your competition to buy and you can make a few dozen... (not that the AI does granted lol) Ok sure you can spend 4-5 million a pop for factories and more factories and more to get some volume... Whats your ROI? Try to imagine your cities surrounded by a gazillion factories (least the graphical representation lol) But I end up thinking why do I bother when I can just buy from the port? What is the point? You can add 5 floors to your retail store... but nope only one floor for your factory. Glaring problem; Branding There is none... there is only brand awareness. One reason to make you own products would be in may eyes seeing you brand leading the way... You can buy advertising and get brand awareness... but it's no different if you buy junk from the port, sell you junk or buy 100 quality from the port. your products just mix in match with "average" quality ratings. Is there brand loyalty? it's not rated or listed. I'll point out capitalism again sorry... You had a choice between a corporate brand, category brand or a specific product brand, plus a re labeling angle that could benefit or hurt your brand depending on quality. You could have great brand loyalty and make a new product and have sales based on your brand. You could also sell you competition product and get a sales boost if he had good marketing. Glaring problem: Resources So the maps in the game are divvied up in sectors you can buy for 7-10 million and each include varying amount of each resource... so each company can have oil... ores... basically there are no monopolies... even if it just a monopoly on the good oil like OPEC. You cannot leverage your opponents infrastructure. Glaring problem: Shares/Trading You can sell your shares, you can buy other companies shares... there are no dividends... can you play as a trader? Considering how poorly the Ia plays so far I'm not entirely sure you can make a profit from selling shares. Glaring problem: Vertical integration Simply put there really is no other way to play the game and its a shame... You cannot be a manufacturer, or a retailer, or a resource seller or a stock trader... you cannot sell your good to other players that I can see not can you buy theirs... you cant even look in their retail shops lol. You have to play as a top to bottom corporation. (Or buy from the port) I would love to have managers added to the game, as well as a personal bio and salary/stocks like capitalism started on. All in all the bones are there but it is FAR to simplistic to be a true business simulator. Maybe a simple tycoon type... Maybe. But as I said the bones are there, they have events in game that have HUGE potential if expanded on. The game seems stable as far as I have seen. Not sure if I can reccomend it as it sits though... I want to, because I want a good simulator to be developed.

Do you like complex economic simulations? Do you like games filled with simulation features, and a rich gameplay? This game is not for you then. I spent roughly an hour and a half getting used to the game itself. Learning the features, how to research products, how to produce, etc. After that, I can confidently say it only takes me 5 minutes of real life time to net 10 million a day for the company. All I did was start out with the biotech, and sold over the counter cold/flu pills for 4000 dollars per PILL. How does this work, you ask? Well, it appears the developers created the advertisement to work as a price + demand modifier. Not only do more people purchase your product when you activate the advertisement, but they will also pay MORE for it. It cost me 3 bucks to produce a single pill, and with 5 minutes of in-game time, maxed out advertisement, I set it to 4000 bucks a pill, and people bought every single pill. All 1400 of them. In fact, I could have done it in even less time, but it took me 4 minutes to research advertisement. Do not recommend. This belongs in early access.

Ok, let`s see, this is not an angry NO because I would say it is fairly priced, more of a disappointed NO, but it can improve since most negatives aspects are balance an AI, not the underlying core mechanics SHORT VERSION: go and buy CAPITALISM 2, it is an actual challenge, has better AI, better balance, good enough interface (!), marketing and advertising actually matter, R&D is better handled, CEO pick matters, stock market matters, etc., you get the picture... LONGER VERSION: - This is not a simulation nor really even a game, this is a "supply chain demonstrator", there is no challenge, there is really no way you can loose if you are half way competent and can do basic math, like 2 is more than 1, that`s enough - In this game it is impossible to over expand, there is no risk involved your decisions, to go full vertical integrations is always the right decisions, no matter what - The AI is close to no existent, a maximum of 4 competitors can be on your map and they basically do nothing but sell a couple of products on and on, this means no competition which means no price war which means insane profits (100% markup is easy to achieve) which, again, means no risks - The stock market and marketing are there but you can ignore them, the same is true for Banks and loans, you won`t need them, it at least gives me hope they can tweak the balance and change this, since the mechanics are already there - R&D is just "time", there`s nothing else involved (other than the setup money costs), no experience gained, no specialization, nothing, your R&D guys can crack any problem equally and with ease given a little time, your company can do anything and everything at once, from drilling oil to manufacture cell phones, which means it has no personality an, again, no risk involved in doing something new an unknown - There`s almost no mechanic dealing with retail, I guess given the title of the game it is not the focus of it, but maybe a couple of options here and there wouldn`t hurt, like should you invest in your own retail chain or not - You pick a CEO at the start and, as far as I can tell, you are stuck with him forever at no cost, salary or anything else is not discussed or negotiated - The UI is not terrible but is lacking obvious options, like the ability to store building profiles to copy and paste into new buildings and not having to setup everything manually every time Overall, my main criticism it there is no risk built into any decision in this game, it is just there to show how a supply chain works at a very basic level It is somewhat sad that CAPITALISM 2 is still the standard after this many years, I guess there is not much market for economic simulators On the positive side, the art and sound are good enough, with a Sims vive to it, and many gameplay mechanics are already there if they choose to work on patching a little challenge into this thing, I hope it does good enough to justify improvement, but I can`t recommended it in it`s actual form

Don't mind my low number of hours, I have around 9 hours and played around 6 different starts and two starts to decent length (above 100M company value). I'll start this off by saying that the game decently simulates industrial assembly. Most consumer goods(there are a lot, probably upwards of 50) that each take some number of raw input goods, which can themselves be also composed of other input goods. This is fairly interesting and provides a good amount of depth at least in terms of construction. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the game in its current state despite the thought that has gone into the production side of the game, as it seems the game essentially ends there. There's an economy simulator part of the side with some kind of supply and demand, but it seems like supply and demand does not impact sales whatsoever other than capping the number of goods you can sell/buy a day. Furthermore, the economy for consumer goods can only be filled by the player and the (maximum of four) AI players. This means that assuming that no AI player goes into the same industry as you, you will essentially have a monopoly on your industry of choice and will be able to sell goods at whatever price you will like. The advertising system is unlockable via research(took me a game or two to figure it out), and essentially you spend money to advertise on various platforms in various cities at various levels. Sounds pretty good right? Unfortunately the way it works is that advertising just makes the AI buy your goods at absurd(double) your usual prices. Real example: I was making Silver/Gold Jewellery. I found out that by spending around 50k on advertisement, I could double the price of my goods during the advertisement duration and make more money even after the advertisement costs. This is fine, except for the fact that the INSTANT you end advertisement everything resets to pre-advertisement levels. Now you can abuse the system super hard by stockpiling a ton of high value goods and then starting a large advertisement campaign, which will then allow you to sell those goods for double the usual price until you sell out of goods in a month or two, upon which you just cancel the advertisement campaign and wait for more goods to stack up so you can repeat the process. PROS -Very good manufacturing simulation -Graphics look pretty nice, like Cities Skyline -UI is pleasant to look at. MEH -Some aspects of the game seem redundant, such as warehouses having a storage limit and an upgrade associated with it, but I've never seen my warehouse above 5% capacity. -Audio is decent, but some parts are really annoying (there's this blowing sound in particular that just kills me). -Map settings are pretty vague but you can figure them out with a bit of experimentation. -All city markets are separate, but you have to sell your goods for the same price at every city. -Not sure if this is a bug or whatever, but the "daily limit" on the number of a metal you can mine seems to have no impact, I had an area that only gave 50 silver per day but I was milking it for over 150 with no apparent issues. CONS -Tedious UI, lot of clicking to get to related sections -Missing Information that would be helpful like total sales for an item, total costs for an item, etc. Don't want to pull out a calculator while playing the game but that's just me. -Market simulation needs a lot of work. -Can't seem to find any competition with the AI, it feels like its just me and 4 bots building in separate industries that come together to compare company size once in a while. -Very rare competition due to hard cap 4 opponent AI and huge choice of products. -Advertising is unintuitive and can be easily abused. TL:DR, The game is good on the production side but needs a lot of work, should be early access. The market simulation mechanics in particular need a lot of work.