Startup Freak

[h1]TL;DR[/h1] A fun, simple, but not overly casual, turn-based tycoon game with an interesting theme. It still suffers from a somewhat clunky UI, but is stable and very playable for being an Early Access title. [h1]Pros[/h1][list] [*]Straightforward and intuitive abstraction of building software. [*]The game mechanics naturally keep you moving, planning ahead, and expanding. [*]Exploring the feature landscape via market research, finding powerful requested features. [*]Interesting take on marketing, and getting investors on board. [*]Charming art style for 2/3s of the game (see cons)*. [*]Decent tutorial and a good easy scenario to learn the ropes.[/list] [h1]Cons[/h1][list] [*]*The graphics of the program architecture / feature plane are VERY basic. [*]Lack of accurate “area of effect” forecast for specific software features. [*]Strong random events that can’t be forecast or mitigated. [*]A few awkward and clunky UI interactions, but generally quite solid.[/list] See how it plays here: https://youtu.be/u2Zq_6zgSUM [h1]General[/h1] Yet another software tycoon game? Yeah, it is, but it doesn’t just come with open hands to accept its piece of the oversaturated pie. This one feels quite unique due to how you build your software on a feature plane that is uncovered gradually by market research. Overall I think the game is simple, but not overly casual. Your CEO and employees each have four skills that feed all activities you line up for the next turn (“sprint”): building features, security, testing, and performance improvements. You optimize your program for the limited space you have uncovered on the feature plane and try to keep up with improving marketing, branding, server infrastructure, etc. The game leaves you a lot of choice and punishes poor decision making. However, sometimes it just decides to screw you via random events, which can be frustrating because there is little to nothing one can do to avoid the bad effects. [h1]Game Flow[/h1] The game flow is one of the game’s strong points. The game mechanics always keep you moving as the customer base expects more and more over time and the competition, albeit invisible, doesn’t sleep. You scale the mountain of ever escalating requests for number of features and program quality, while uncovering new space to accommodate for these features. This also requires an ever more competent team to stay on top, and servers that don’t suffer from Error 37 as soon as your program becomes slightly more popular. This core gameplay loop balances its elements well and just works. It is fun! [h1]Flaws[/h1] There is a bit of a dichotomy between the two main screens (HQ and software), where the game throws you back to the HQ which still lacks a lot of information I would like to see, that the software screen does provide. Most of my criticism lies with the implementation and lack of polish of the software feature building part of the game. It looks very barren in a bad way, has some clunky UI interactions and frustrates when the lack of feature-effect forecasting leaves you with a messed up piece of software through none of your own informed wrongdoing. Once you learn your way around these limitations (or they get fixed as the developer already has hinted at), it plays pretty well overall though! [h1]State of the Game at Launch[/h1] The game is rather stable, in 15h+ of gameplay I only had one crash. However, there still are plenty of small and large balancing issues, as well as a general lack of polish. Not more than would be expected of an Early Access title though. [i]This review is based on the Early Access release version 0.72.[/i]

At this time, this is a very shallow game with very little nuance. Past 3-4 hours, it is a repetative clicker. Do not spend your money on this game now.

Fun game! Striking a balance of spending money and improving your product will take several failed attempts, much like real life! It's actually quite educational as well; using actual tech startup terminology like sprints. The devs definitely deserve your $10 for this great game! :)

No endless game mode! I expected to have a game with endless game like any tycoon game, but it will end after you sell your company. As this happend after 4 hours for me, i also cannot get a refund since steam support dont read the resonsing or dont care. I feel a bit ripped of now. The game itself is fun for a short period, but repeat itself alot toward the end. There is not much of replayability, although since it is early access this might of course change.

Unfortunately the game is dead and no longer being worked on. It had potential but a long way to go.

I've had the pleasure to play this game since early December last year. Throughout this time I have heavily enjoyed my playtime, the game has quite some challenge to it and it has taken me a while to learn but once you get the hang of the gameplay it turns into a highly enjoyable challenge, battling with consumer's needs, product development, HR and the random events leave no dull moment in the gameplay. I would highly recommend

good game for the first few hours, but once you unlocked everything the game becomes boring very fast

The game is attractive but it's just lacking any instruction or tutorial or even the feature to hover over icons and maybe a window pop up that gives a brief description of where and what things do would be nice. To make this short I refunded before I went any further because I would rather have the money they end up at the end of this unsatisfied for the lack of depth. I will revisit a year from now and see if anything got better. Thanks for the play though it was confusing but I had some fun for the last hour.

The game has potential but from the 115 minutes I played it I was not impressed with some lack of clarity in how to progress. I had to desperately seek investors despite having put in a good amount of effort into the design of my product and marketing. However, I couldn't find enough users to purchase the product. I fealt that it wasn't worth the effort of trying to learn it either because there isn't enough guides in the game to teach you how best to manage your company. If more effort is put into the game I might try it again in the future but for now I'm going to have to pass.

Link zum kompletten Review: https://www.zockger.de/startup-freak/ Startup Freak ist eine Startup-Simulation mit strategischen Elementen und einer Vielzahl interessanter Features, welche dieses Spiel aus der Masse vergleichbarer Spiele herausstechen lässt. Das Konzept des Spiels ist gut durchdacht und das Gesamtpaket stimmt. Während das Spiel durch die drei Schwierigkeitsmodi durchaus Replayability besitzt, wären für den allgemeinen Spielverlauf noch weitere Meilensteine oder beispielsweise ein Endlos-Modus wünschenswert. Ebenfalls ist das User Interface noch recht ausbaufähig. Insgesamt war das Spiel nach knapp 7 Stunden durchgespielt, was dem Preis in Höhe von 9,99€ vollkommen gerecht wird. Nicht zu vergessen ist, dass sich das Spiel noch im Early Access befindet und noch weiterentwickelt wird, wobei es meiner Meinung nach jetzt schon mehr Content als manch andere Tycoons besitzt. Zum aktuellen Zeitpunkt ist Startup Freak ein sehr empfehlenswertes Spiel, mit einigen kleineren Mängeln, über die man meiner Meinung nach hinwegsehen kann.