Just when you thought you'd been the tycoon of everything, along comes School Tycoon. The game puts you in charge of a school's operations, so you must make concessions between the school's budget and the students' education. It's rather simple for a tycoon game, and there are some noticeable bugs that can be frustrating. However, the game's simplicity does work well to create an entertaining strategy gaming experience, as long as you're not looking for a hardcore number-crunching game.
Right from the start, you know School Tycoon is going to be lighthearted. The introduction cinematic is amusing to watch because it features a stressed-out, bumbling principal who boils over the edge and tells you to run the school. You apparently take him up on the offer, so you can either solve 24 challenges or build a school from the ground up in a sandbox mode. The challenge mode is divided into eight beginner, eight intermediate, and eight difficult scenarios where you'll have to do everything from merely getting 30 students into your school to earning $100,000 within a certain time frame. The beginner challenges will only take you about an hour to finish in total, while even one difficult challenge can take you several hours to solve. If you want to start from scratch, you can play the instant action mode. This sandbox mode has no objectives, so you can just build and build to your heart's content.
You can construct all sorts of classrooms, from those used for mathematics to those used for English. There are about 10 different subjects that your students can learn. You start off with a small, portable classroom that will seat just a few students. Later on, you can build medium and then deluxe versions of classrooms for each subject, and these upgraded classrooms can house more students and can better educate them. However, academics aren't the only part of a student's life because he or she also needs to keep fit. You'll first build a basic gymnasium and field, but soon you'll unlock other athletic structures, like tennis courts, basketball courts, and football fields.
You do have to hire teachers for each of these buildings or else your students won't learn a thing. A teacher has three traits: fun, strict, and skill. The first will affect students' morale; the second will affect students' levels of discipline; and the third will affect students' academic and athletic abilities. Teachers' wages are based on how high these three traits are. You'll need to hire low-quality teachers at the start of your career because you won't be able to afford better ones. You'll notice that the teachers' salaries represent the highest cost of your school. But once you have a solid foundation, you can start to hire more-expensive teachers. If you don't like the selection of teachers available, you can just close the menu and reopen it to get a new set of teachers to choose from. It may be a simple way to approach the situation, but at least you won't be stuck with someone you don't want. Your school is ranked on several averages, including the three listed above. Better teachers are the best way to influence your scores.
Students will quickly get bored with your school, unless you provide them with a nice environment and good entertainment. You can pretty up your campus with trees, shrubbery, statues, and pathways, and you actually have a wide assortment of each to choose from, so even you won't get bored easily. You do have to maintain these frills though, because each item will degrade over time and may even catch on fire. Maintenance crews repair buildings, janitors sweep pathways, and landscapers keep trees healthy. They incur an extra cost though, because they are hired help. You also can--and should--build entertainment structures, like arcades, halfpipes, and miniature golf courses, to keep your students active outside of class. Both landscapes and entertainment will drive up your student body's morale and will keep students enrolled.
You want to keep your students enrolled because, presumably, they affect your income. Part of the game's simplicity results from its budget. You can see your costs, but you never see where income is derived from. The manual is no help either. You have no idea if your new pizza joint is providing you with income from lunch sales. (It would be nice to be able to charge a little more per slice to give you a slight income boost in a pinch.) The budget also seems to change often, so even though it says you will earn $2,000, you may actually earn less if a student happens to leave right before the next cycle. The charts also aren't very detailed, so don't expect any rewarding information beyond simple line charts.
There are several issues in the game that can get frustrating. First, when you reload a saved game, everything is reset. You can no longer track stats from your earlier play session. What's even more detrimental is that somehow your budget gets wacky. You can save the game with $5,000 in the bank, but when you load it, you'll find yourself $3,000 in debt. It becomes a real problem when you can't earn enough to get yourself in the black after three days. The game will declare you bankrupt, and then it's game over. Also, the game's disasters tend to strike with frightening frequency. Even one disaster can get you fired. For instance, just by losing all your decorations, your students may end up leaving. You can't save often and load to avoid these disasters because of the aforementioned problem, so you really must leave your game session up to fate. You also can't put out fires, so an outbreak of them can also spell your doom.
School Tycoon doesn't have cutting-edge graphics or sound, but it is a pleasant game to play. The environments and buildings are bright and colorful. You can easily design your school so that nothing is even close to repetitive. There are a wide variety of students, so you also won't see dozens of clones being taught in your classrooms. You can rotate and zoom in to get different views of your campus, if you need to see something from a different angle. You also won't get bored from the music or sounds. There are appropriate classroom sounds, from bells to friends chatting after bumping into each other.
It's easy to just roll one's eyes at the thought of another tycoon game, but it's not fair to dismiss School Tycoon for its name. It may not be the most complex tycoon game in existence, and it may have some unfortunate bugs, but its various gameplay elements work. There is a fair amount of micromanagement required in choosing the right teachers and constructing the right buildings, but it doesn't reach a point that makes the game unbearable. So if you're looking for a management game that won't overwhelm you with details and spreadsheets, School Tycoon should be right up your alley.
System requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Processor: Pentium II 300
Memory: 32 MB
700 MB free hard disk space
System recommand
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Proccessor: Pentium III 800 MHz
Memory 128
700 MB free hard disk space
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Publisher: Activision Value
Publisher: Atari
Developer: Deep Red
Genre: Business Strategy
Release Date: Sep 24, 2001
ESRB: EVERYONE
Number of Players: 1-4
Most previous PC games based on Monopoly have gone in one of two directions: They either combine the classic property-trading game with another popular license, as in Monopoly Star Wars Edition, or they use the strong Monopoly brand and distinctive graphics to spruce up another type of game, as in Monopoly Casino. Fortunately, Monopoly Tycoon breaks the mold by using the popular board game as the base on which to build a strong and innovative, and great-looking, real-time game of business management and city building.
Monopoly Tycoon is the kind of game you might have imagined as a kid while you played the real board game. The game includes all the familiar Monopoly elements, such as buying and selling properties and utilities, collecting rent, and managing your money, but it expands on the idea by letting you build a variety of retail and residential buildings and then manage your businesses by setting stock amounts, prices, and rent. If you've ever wanted to see what an expensive Boardwalk hotel would look like up close, this is your chance. While Monopoly purists may be wary of the numerous changes and additions that have been made to the classic game, the end result is a pleasing and challenging blend of city building and economic management, all created in the familiar, lighthearted style of Monopoly.
You begin the game with a set amount of money in 1930, at which point the game's virtual city is only sparsely built. You can proceed to invest in property, utilities, and railroads, as well as build businesses. The game's easy-to-use research and analysis functions help you choose where to build different types of structures--for instance, a poll conducted on a specific city block may reveal that the various inhabitants want more bread and meat, indicating that a butcher shop or bakery would do well at that location. It's important to do some research before building, since there are more than 40 types of potential businesses, and some will be more profitable than others. The game also provides statistics on what types of people live in or commute to the city, which helps you figure out what kind of residential structures to build.
The property-management portion of Monopoly Tycoon comes into play when you want to lease an entire city block. You compete against up to five other business owners during the game, and at any point, one of you can flag a city block for auction, and all the others then have a chance to bid for that property. Once you've leased a block, you become the landlord and collect the rent from the businesses on that block for a period of time. If you lease all of the blocks in a color group (which represents a district or neighborhood, as in the board game), you gain the right to build hotels, along with other advantages such as lower buyout costs. As the years pass in the virtual city, new businesses become available, such as ice cream parlors, bowling alleys, and nightclubs, and eventually supermarkets, video stores, and computer stores.
Monopoly Tycoon has a wide variety of single-player scenarios with goals that range from building the largest empire by a certain year, to gaining the most popular votes to become mayor of the city. There's even a Survivor-style last-man-standing scenario, where the city inhabitants vote players out of the game one by one. The game runs in real time through day/night cycles, each of which represents five years of game time, and time can also be accelerated to speed through the occasional slow period. Most scenarios last between 30 minutes and an hour or so as the game progresses from the 1930s up through the 1990s. The game includes three difficulty levels, which adjust the strength of the opponents' artificial intelligence as well as your starting funds, and even the easiest level should provide plenty of challenge and entertainment for most players.
Requirements:
Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP,
233MHz CPU,
64MB RAM,
200MB free disk space
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Genre : Business Strategy
Company : Valuesoft
Rating : E (Everyone)
Discs : 1
Additional Info : 1 Player
Release Date : 07/11/2007
Description
Are you ready to build the greatest midway on earth? Summer nights flashing lights stomach churning rides girls and guys all combine to make the perfect carnival. Attract them thrill them feed them frighten them and leave them yearning for more! From parking lots to big time - start small building local fun fairs outside malls and grow your business one happy customer at at time. Strap into any of the 25 different rides at your disposal and feel what your crowds feel as you plunge through the electrifying twists and turns. Maximize your money making potential by planning and constructing additional carnivals as the others are coming to a close. Choose set-up and design your food and drink stations - 12 delicious food and drink options available! Come one come all!
Game Info
players design and manage their own virtual carnivals in this budget-friendly business simulation from ValuSoft. Game booths, food stands, and curious spectacle tents are available for prime placement on the midway, along with more than two dozen different rides, but beginning carnies will have to work their way up to be able to afford the most profitable attractions. Sandbox-type play lets creativity reign, while ten preset missions put management skills to the test.
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part7,part8,part9,part10,part11,part12
