‘Rise Of Industry 2’ by SomaSim, drops you into industrial entrepreneurship with an 80s twist. A game about testing your business prowess, can you flip profits by building a productive empire, or will you crash and burn the economy of some poor unsuspecting town?

Hired by the board at the Initial Logistics Incorporated group, it is your job to turn Spoolsville into a thriving industrial sector. Pioneering business strategies in this town, it is your job to develop complex production lines to bring capital gains into the town. From paint to paper, rubber to candy, lumber yards to even nuclear waste, production will be your bread and butter.

It is a very typical story of these types of games; in this case, they try to pump up the weak narrative with video clips on a television, which is a nice sentiment. The challenges do create decent scenarios, though, that more successfully dive a bit deeper into motives and driving objectives.

Gameplay is split into two modes: the Campaign and Sandbox. The tutorial is very helpful and takes a good chunk of time to complete because this game is very indepth. Almost to a fault. There are fields and fields of deep menus to navigate. Build menus, contract ones, teams and deliveries as well as menus for investors, reports, land management, missions, and deposit sites.

The production manual itself is scary. It is very extensive and very overwhelming. It does take a while to get your head around. This is supported by the fact that everything on the console just felt a bit clunky. I would imagine it is ten times better on PC to maneuver around the map quickly to micro-manage everything.

Once you do get your head around it all, though, it opens up to a pretty decent experience as you conquer the many scenarios the campaign throws at you. You will mine raw resources, set up factories, storage, refineries, delivery lines and the roll-on effect will be immense as you then can produce more and more products, technologies, goods and materials. You will also need to research new technologies and meet with sales to organise deals with suppliers. This will mean negotiation to buy or sell products you need or have an abundance of.

To keep these supply lines running with efficiency, you will also need to manage power and water supplies with plants and lines and entice labour from the local town, its only real job. This does become annoying as they are dependent on each area you are developing, and not a universal source, which it probably should be.

I was often moving or deleting them as they were placed in the wrong industrial area. You also can’t really plan your landscape super efficiently. Wouldn’t it make sense to build water production lines or water generators near water, not in an open field or make the terrain flatter in muchly needed areas?

Graphically, the game feels dated. Normally, I am not a stickler for graphics, but these are just very basic and cartoony that they just felt a little off. The environments weren’t particularly interesting from one biome to another, and the actual factories, buildings and infrastructure were not particularly outstanding in difference from each other, either, well not enough to be particularly impressed. The cuts with the television are a nice visual break, though I really enjoyed seeing, albeit briefly and far too few in between.

The audio is passable. It’s neither memorable nor outstanding, but it gets the job done of envisioning the process and filling a void. I wouldn’t call it immersive sound; the game needs something grittier and grungier.

I had a pretty sound time with Rise Of Industry 2, but I can’t particularly say it’s a riveting time sifting through menus upon menus and looking at factories that all seem to look the same, but the gameplay is enough to keep the ball rolling for a while. I can attest, though, for a die-hard fan, this will provide hours of gear churning, order-filling, industrial fun.

Written by: Stacey