States, Firms, & Households Reviews

I really don't know what the description of this game is going on about, calling itself an "Economic studio". While the economic model is interesting: unowned laborers decide where to live/work based on distance and cost/salary, the AI games have no settings or options, just everyone thrown in together on one tiny map where the AI will always make roughly the same decisions and outcomes, and build some strange-looking, tiny industrial blob. The tools to view the in-game economy that has developed are underpowered and unhelpful, and it is basically impossible to find the information you would need to micromanage your production. Aside from that, the game, in its current state, is very limited. There are only a small handful of production chains, and a pathetically small maximum map size. The game advertises multiplayer, but my client wasn't able to connect to their matchmaking servers. Running the game just to see what kind of economy the AI will set up can be mildly interesting the first time, but once that point is reached there's nothing to do aside from look at vague, scattered charts for an individual building's production, without any proper context of its relation to the economy as a whole, and without being able to discern any useful information for its impact on the game's economy. Once the AI fills up the incredibly tiny map you just have to sit around tweaking numbers and hoping one of the other companies goes out of business eventually so that it clears up a few tiny plots of land for whatever you had planned next. Maybe I'm not supposed to look at this as a "Game", but given the lack of feedback for what's happening, I can't imagine it being a very useful "Economic simulator" either. It feels very unfinished, with very little to do and a terrible UI. The developer doesn't include any sort of tutorial or guide, and while it's not too hard to figure out what's happening on your own, this period of learning for yourself is very conveinent for the dev, since Steam has a no-refund policy past 2 hours of playtime.