Industry Giant 2 – What’s The Game About?
Industry Giant 2 is a business / transport simulation game with a lot in common with Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe (which we made a review on lately) and the Capitalism series. This with the difference that Capitalism Lab (check out our review here) goes deeper into simulating the management of firms such as picking R&D projects and doing HR. Industry Giant 2 is almost like Transport Tycoon with certain added elements familiar for those having played Capitalism series.
In the game you’re able to build factories and retail stores. This as well as having products to choose between. These things are very Capitalismesque and I like it. The developers list out over 150 products and 50 vehicles. These are among the immersion-building elements of the game.
What Does the Player Do In Industry Giant 2?
The player builds factories, develops products and controls the prices of products in his (or her) stores. All this to create his own Industry Giant. Gigantism can be achieved in multiple ways such as agriculture or industrial production.
The player is introduced to several business metrics to keep track of how their Industry Giant is developing. These are costs, turnover, profit, company value and luxury points. My first steps after half an hour of playing were wobbly to say at the least. See the screenshot below. I was investing heavily into new factories and retail stores.
Wobbly Baby Steps For Me, The Industrialist
In the beginning you have to be ready to spend some time just playing around and learning the ropes. Learning how the truck controls and supply chain management works takes its time. In the beginning the pace of the game is pretty slow. This is a problem Industry Giant has in common with OpenTTD.
This might be an annoyance for the more impatient players. However, there sure is something very satisfying in slowly building out your industrial empire and seeing it grow. Below you see a screenshot of how the game world looks like. This view is very familiar to those who’ve played Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
The Business is Founded – Now What? When Do We Become the Industry Giant?
Making the business profitable is pretty easy. This can be done by building out farms. The farms can grow livestock, eggs or milk. These can be sold in retail stores.
Being profitable is one thing but being able to scale the business is another. So far I didn’t yet get the hang of how to use the trucking system. This made it so that I couldn’t transport the goods from one city to another. Without being able to transport the player is stuck in the city they operate in. There’s a need to replicate their farms and warehouse infrastructure in each new city.
This replicating costs money and makes the players operations less profitable. I will be playing the game for more time and find out how to maneuver the supply chains properly.
Logistics Struggles
As seen in the screenshot above, I was having big problems getting the products from my factories to the stores. Thus the sales revenue was pretty modest except for the trustworthy grocery stores.
The sad part was that I had already invested a lot of money to the retail stores. I didn’t manage to get my products from factories to stores. This is probably because I didn’t play the tutorials and learn how to setup truck routes.
The graphics are very much the same style as other retro greats. It reminds me of the earlier installments of Civilization, Sims and Capitalism. The game has strong retro vibes and this will be really nice for people into old-school gaming.
Summary Of Industry Giant 2 Review
My first impression of Industry Giant 2 is that the game presents good potential to be explored. It sports many of the features that made Transport Tycoon such a game classic.
The player is not only able to build passenger routes and transport goods. This feature can also be found in Transport Tycoon. Industry Giant 2 also allows the player to build their own production and stores network.
This will be especially appealing to players like me. People who enjoy the business simulation elements present in games such as Capitalism Lab.
Earlier in this article I described IG2 as Transport Tycoon with factories and stores. This impression has stuck at least until the end of this first impression.
I recommend players new to Industry Giant 2 to have patience and, unlike me, play through the tutorials. I wanted to get straight into the playing action. As a tuition fee was feeling a bit lost in the game mechanics. The game shows a great potential which I’ll be exploring deeper in the near future.
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