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Rise of Industry is a gleefully-vindictive tycoon sim inspired by Transport Tycoon

Rise of Industry

Rise of Industry’s council folk are vicious. All we did is build a series of chemical plants near one town – which is environmentally irresponsible, sure – and now its leadership have set about bad-mouthing us to nearby municipalities. Do they know the damage they’ve done?

Another contender for the best strategy games on PC.

Our relationships with those other towns are souring and, as a result, we are suffering a decline in sales of our excellent cutlery range. Worse still, these petty appointees have built their ownchemical plants on the other side of the district – closer to the residents than our ones, mind you – in an attempt to tank the price of our products.

There’s nothing for it. We’ll have to start producing paint and simultaneously expand our corned meat operation. That’ll show ‘em.

Rise of Industry

Rise of Industry channels the industrious spirit of Transport Tycoon, Industry Giant, and Anno, presenting a network of towns and then letting you set up links between them. In Dapper Penguin Studio’s game, however, you get to pock the map with factories, farmland, mines, and logistical buildings. It’s a title that plays directly to our thirst for power, success, and bitter rivalry – how do you think we got this far in life?

The finished game will feature hundreds of product recipes for you to work from. Everything from apple pies and marmalade, to office furniture, winter clothes, and handbags. There are luxury items, too, like brandy and “fancy beds.” To make any of these, you will need to extract and refine raw resources – copper, iron, coal, etc. – and then turn them into components for manufacture.

You don’t have to be a blight on the pastoral, procedurally-generated landscapes, however, and can go out of your way to grow your business in a socially and and environmentally conscious way, too. Do so and you’ll even get bonuses and favours from residents – who may pay over the odds for your totally woke gift wrapping range – and tax breaks from the local authorities.

Rise of Industry

It’s not just PR you have to worry about either as natural disasters such as floods can also throw a soggy spanner into the works, the game’s various biomes throwing up differing logistical challenges. There are cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes, too, if you really fancy capitalising on the potential for backstabbing and corporate subterfuge.

And if all of that isn’t enough, Dapper Penguin is opening the game up as much as possible by offering extensive Steam Workshop support along with a flexible modding API.

It all sounds splendid, actually, and we can’t wait to embark on a campaign of deforestation and depot building, filling newly-laid roads with fume-belching trucks as we spread our delightful, unethically-produced chocolate bars across the region. If we’re going down then everyone’s coming with us.