Game Tycoon

The year is 1982. You and two of your closest friends decide to have a competition to see who can become the most successful game developers. "Game Tycoon" has you pick one of the three characters, and try your hand at developing games.

Developing a game and the game engine is simple. You pick the features, the programmers, and other artists, and tell them to get to work. There's lots of dragging and dropping, and picking check boxes to get the the game developed, published, and promoted. Granted, a lot of games are just a bunch of clicking, but this process isn't even close to being fun in "Game Tycoon."

The problems start out in the tutorial. Instead of getting hints, when you can't figure out how to do the task given, the tutorial guy just keeps giving the same instructions. Repeatedly as if to mock your misery as you hunt for the answer. I would have thought that there would have been a help file linked the PDA. Instead, it just gave me messages with no details on how to follow through. This process of having to do something and attempting to figure out, becomes increasingly frustrating.

The graphics, the gameplay, the overall style of the game, doesn't take advantage of technology that has come out in the last few years. You don't even get to play your game you developed. Do yourself a favor and don't bother even trying to figure this one out. Because once you do, you'll find it wasn't worth the effort.