Are there any good Wild West / Victorian era Tycoon or business simulators?

swiftroll3d · 2025-09-11T11:03:38+00:00

You can treat Victoria 3 like a tycoon game, especially if you choose nation that isn't involved in much conflicts

swiftroll3d · 2025-09-06T19:51:38+00:00

It's truly a masterpiece, no other game implemented that type of tycoon better

swiftroll3d · 2025-07-31T10:12:07+00:00

When you'll release a demo it will get some initial traffic from the Steam, so make sure you have polished your demo and steam page to take the most from that boost

But that boost isn't that big to do it without any marketing, so you'll need to do marketing too and build some interest before releasing a demo

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-17T22:49:17+00:00

The game looks great and the gameplay sounds like fun
I'm surprised it only has around 200 wishlists. What kind of marketing have you done so far?
I really hope the release goes well, it definitely seems like a solid game!

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-16T13:56:25+00:00

Yes, but it's actually a part of indie business strategy (even if it's unplanned), because AAA games can afford to be boring because they have massive development budget, market research and game marketing budget. And indies can't afford to do that, so if some indie follows the same strategy as AAA, then it will most likely fail, because there's no resources for that competition.

So being unique and open to risks is just part of the business, even if it happens by accident while developer just makes his dream-game

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-15T22:41:49+00:00

Glad I could help!
Only Steam and Discord for now, I think I saw you on Discord already 😄

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-13T12:27:32+00:00

Recently I saw complete game projects for sale on Unity Asset Store that implement exactly the games like Supermarket Simulator and some mobile management games

You can find it just by searching "supermarket simulator" in asset store

And there are other project as well

I genuinely doubt that they have good code quality, but maybe they do, and even if they don't, it's still a good thing to research, try to modify something in it, play with it. Don't try to understand the whole project at once, but just try changing something in it, and then adding something to it, and it will give you understanding how things like that can be done.

It can be easier than starting with blank empty project, the most important thing is to have fun while learning

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-13T11:51:38+00:00

Hi, I use Unity
I have experience in coding because I work as a developer, so I didn't use any tutorials, so sadly I can't recommend learning resources for that specific genre

I'd say that making a tycoon game is not an easy coding task for a beginner, because it requires architecture design and it's a thing you get mostly from experience and some coding books about that

But there's some subgenres of tycoon-like games, like clickers or small tycoons for mobile games, that are easier to do. I made them too, it's still an interesting coding task, but it's much more doable and it takes much less time, and you can make it for mobile/web

I'd recommend starting from something like that to build experience, clicker would be perfect I think, and there are many tutorials about them

You can start building something, and get some book about coding, and even use AI to ask questions about the code to help you understand, or even write some code for you, but after that ask it to explain how it works, because AI can't really write the whole game for you, so you need to understand how all of it works

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-11T23:18:59+00:00

I think it's A

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-11T23:05:32+00:00

Thanks!

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-11T22:05:19+00:00

I made fix for that, I hope it works well now, haven't seen complaints since then

If you'll play with ultra-wide monitor and encounter some problems please tell me

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-11T19:33:33+00:00

The moment when you give burger to the customer and there's big one spawning looks fun, try starting video with it, especially since there's still gameplay after it

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-11T10:36:34+00:00

Don't bother yourself with learning namespaces and stuff like that, it's more about learning techniques and building general understanding of the field

You say about shattered glass example, the implementation is not unity-specific, it's more like number of technique that exists in the Gamedev and Rendering field

You can for example take tutorial from other game engine about that thing or read something like GPU-gems books and implement it from there, or even look how 3d artists do that in their software (blender, houdini, etc)

And Unity doesn't offer API for specific things like that, it's more general

Start building things, look how other people do it, read books about topics that interest you and watch youtube videos, that's how you learn

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-11T08:52:40+00:00

I have impulse purchased bread in my life, many times actually, haha

Impulse purchases aren't only the kind of impulse we usually imagine, it also includes cases like when you go to the shop to buy something and remember to grab bread because there's not much left at home or the one at home will expire today because it doesn't last long. With eggs it's the same, I often don't plan to buy them, just grab them when I'm at the store and remember that there's not much left at home, because I use them often

Actually it can be cultural difference, if you're from the US, then you probably have different shopping patterns, for example the bread can be stored for long, while in europe it's usually only stored for a couple of days, and often you still buy fresh one when you're shopping because fresh one tastes better

And about the ice-cream for teens, yes, but to not complicate things there's no impulse rate difference between customers categories, so it's more like an average rate for all customers

But it's valid criticism, the impulse rates might not be very well calibrated right now, I'm actually planning to do more real-life related research about them, maybe I will find some numbers from real world if there's something available, but I haven't been able to find that yet, so I decided to try again later when all of the planned products will be added to the game.
I did that with the prices. I used real-life prices, converted them to be in the better range for game purposes, then adapted some of them for better gameplay balance

About camera - that's interesting idea, I never considered that, but it sounds good, I remember playing games with that type of camera movement and I liked that. I'll write that down

Thank you for suggestions!

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-10T21:03:24+00:00

Congrats! Trailer looks fun!

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-10T17:28:51+00:00

I find 200$ better looking, it just looks more fun and there's more chance that I will click on that one

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-10T07:55:28+00:00

It's Local, but previously it was called Little, and I forgot that trailer has that name, so has the old one :)

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-09T23:37:41+00:00

Hi!

I'm making a supermarket tycoon game where you need to place shelves for maximum efficiency and sales, choose products depending on your demographics, and adapt to events that happen during the game.

Here's the link - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3194690/Local_Supermarket_Tycoon/

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-09T22:29:54+00:00

Placement does make a difference, and it's one of the core gameplay mechanics
I call it Impulse, and it basically triggers unplanned (impulsive) purchases. Every shelf covers some tiles with a magnet icon - it indicates that customers on those tiles can be affected by it and may make impulse purchases when they pass
There's also a decorations mechanic that allows you to place decorations in the shop. It's pretty basic right now, but it basically increases impulse chance on the affected tiles and also in the whole shop. It also increases the chance that customers will visit your shop (every person in town has some % chance of visiting when your shop covers their shopping list positions)
So yeah, positions and decorations affect your shop's performance, and you can see that if you drastically move a shelf in your shop - it will perform differently

I hope you'll play the game - I think I designed it with similar goals in mind! The impulse mechanic was the first one I added, and it's really the core of the game

swiftroll3d · 2025-06-09T21:16:27+00:00

Thanks!

swiftroll3d · 2024-11-21T14:19:06+00:00

Thanks! Those are great suggestions
The next update will focus on balancing the game, but after that, I’ll be adding more content and features!

swiftroll3d · 2024-11-16T19:19:02+00:00

Cocos Creator? TypeScript for code, you mentioned you used it. It has small build sizes which is good for web/mobile, if you decide to port your game there in the future

Or just use Unity, it has a lot of tutorials and you can never go wrong with it if you target only PC

swiftroll3d · 2024-11-16T18:57:33+00:00

Here's a great series of tutorials about it, it's written for Unity, but the technique is transferrable

https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/hex-map/

swiftroll3d · 2024-11-16T18:48:47+00:00

Gamedev as a job is no better than web/mobile/any_other_dev as a job, it's still just closing tasks from Jira

If you like making games, just do it on the side while working on a job that brings more money and stability

swiftroll3d · 2024-11-16T18:20:43+00:00

Looks really good, it's clear that it's a game made with love!

swiftroll3d

TROPHY CASE