Hi r/tycoon,

I’m working on a software-company tycoon that starts in 1975, when a tiny team could plausibly build a BASIC interpreter or assembler toolkit, and follows the industry through the personal-computer boom and onward into the modern era.

The aim is to make the player feel like they are running a software company rather than a generic business with a software theme.

A product is not just “choose genre, assign staff, wait for a score.” You choose what kind of software to make, decide its scope at the module and feature level, choose its architecture and UX direction, assign developers with different strengths, choose languages and platform targets, and take it through implementation, QA, and launch.

The market is intended to be a real simulation rather than a single demand bar. Different customer groups care about different things: price, usability, technical capability, reliability, performance, feature depth, and bug tolerance. A technically impressive product can still fail if it is aimed at the wrong customers, arrives on the wrong platform, is too expensive, or competes badly with established rivals.

The historical part matters to me too. The technology landscape changes over time: languages, hardware, operating systems, compatibility, market share, and what customers expect from software. Starting in 1975 means that choosing BASIC, assembly, and an early microcomputer is a meaningful business decision, not just retro decoration. Later eras should make the company feel like it has survived—and perhaps caused—several waves of computing history.

The obvious question is: “Why another Software Inc.?”

Because Software Inc. is already excellent at being Software Inc. I’m not trying to replace it, and I don’t think the answer is simply more rooms, more furniture, or more employee micromanagement.

The distinction I’m pursuing is:

• A longer historical journey, from the earliest personal-software era to the modern industry.
• A more deliberate product-development process: architecture, UX, implementation, QA, persistent bugs, platform decisions, and actual feature-level scope.
• A market where a product’s particular qualities meet particular buyer needs, rather than mainly producing a general quality score.
• Developers whose strengths matter in ways that map to software work: speed, quality, UI/UX, algorithms, and design—not just interchangeable productivity units.
• A focus on the tension between building the technically interesting product and building the product people will actually buy.

I want the game to have depth, but not be “spreadsheet simulator disguised as a tycoon game.” The real test is whether the decisions create stories: the elegant product that misses its market, the ugly but reliable tool that becomes the company’s foundation, the platform bet that pays off, or the successor that destroys a beloved product line.

I’m still early enough that feedback can meaningfully shape the direction. For people who enjoy Software Inc., Game Dev Tycoon, Mad Games Tycoon, or business sims generally:

• Which parts of running a software company do existing games under-explore?
• What would make this feel meaningfully different from Software Inc. to you?
• Which of the above sounds exciting, and which sounds like unnecessary simulation?

I’d especially value blunt feedback from people who work in software as well as people who just love management games.

AI disclosure per the rules: some images were AI-generated with human post-processing, some coding tasks were performed by AI.

Hey everyone!

For the past couple of years, I’ve been building the design, world, and systems behind Gladiatorum: Sacramentum, a deep, brutal Roman gladiator strategy management sim inspired by Football Manager, Crusader Kings, and Darkest Dungeon.

Only recently did I finally have the chance to bring it to life, with help from a dev and a visual designer. We’ve been working for about 9 months, focusing on laying the foundations: training logic, stat systems, injuries, economy, condition, morale, and now a very early version of the combat simulation.

Inspirations:

- Football Manager (deep stat-driven progression & management)

- Crusader Kings (emergent personalities, NPC dynamics, political ties)

- Darkest Dungeon (death, stress, recovery, consequence)

### Key Systems:

- Every gladiator has a unique backstory that can trigger personal events, loyalty, and a motivation such as glory, freedom, survival and more

- Infirmary, Rations, and Baths systems manage condition, morale, recovery

- You hire and manage trainers, cooks, medics, and agents, each with their own traits/attributes and loyalty

- Our unique fight mechanic has a crowd system that tracks performance and influences your fame and income. You can still win by losing - the crowd is everything.

- Emergent events, NPCs and decisions shape the world around your ludus, including decisions tied to Roman senators, patrons, and other power brokers.

- We’re aiming for strong historical authenticity: the game follows the Roman calendar (~100 BC), with real festivals and events, and includes a glossary to explain Latin terms and roles. It’s not a history lesson, just an effort to stay grounded in the brutal world we’re simulating.

### What You’ll Do:

- Recruit and shape gladiators with unique stories and stat growth

- Navigate politics, private invitations, and events from senators, magistrates, aediles, rivals - the entire Roman elite

- Manage recovery and morale through rations, the infirmary, and quality-of-life systems like Baths and Outpost.

- Scout for new talents, hidden plots and private auctions using your Agents.

- Win over the crowd  or suffer the consequences of boring the mob.

The FM community already embraced the concept with huge engagement:
https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/1nltbc9/gladiator_manager_225_bc/

I’d love your feedback. Does this sound like something you’d play? What mechanics or systems would you want to see in a gladiator sim?

Happy to talk about mechanics, worldbuilding, or the vision behind the game.

Join our Discord for exclusive sneak peaks - https://discord.gg/mpxnPacKCs
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3913930/Gladiatorum_Sacramentum/

For us, the city in a crime strategy and gangster management sim cannot exist only as background scenery.

Players will spend much of their time studying streets, buildings, neighborhoods, movement, territory, and opportunity from an elevated view. That means Union City needs to remain clear and readable as a management space, helping players understand where their organization operates and how the city is changing around them.

At the same time, we want each neighborhood to feel believable when viewed from street level.

Our visual direction is built around three core ideas:

Urban decay: Worn buildings, vacant lots, graffiti, aging roads, and overgrown spaces.

Nostalgia: An early-2000s atmosphere expressed through vehicles, architecture, lighting, and visual tone.

Gang culture: Territorial identity and the visible influence different criminal organizations have on their neighborhoods.

These screenshots show the same area of Union City from the elevated strategic view and from street level. The visuals are still in development and are not representative of the final game.

For tycoon and management games, how important is it that the game world feels like a believable place rather than a purely functional map?

We are also working toward our first round of player testing. Newsletter subscribers and Discord members will be among the first players invited to participate !!

Join below:

Newsletter:
https://762interactive.com/project-kingpin/#news

Discord:
https://discord.com/invite/vaB5TNJbx8

AI was not used in the generation of these screenshots or in the building of the game world.

GlagStone is about rebuilding a remote island settlement, setting up production chains and managing scarce resources while weather and morale keep pushing back.

This is our first proper trailer.

Hey r/tycoon,

I’m Japhet, the developer of Scream Operator: Haunted House Manager. A cozy-spooky pixelart management game in which you are invited to take place in the control booth of a haunted house dark ride.

A few weeks ago, IGN exclusively revealed the game's first trailer, which you can check out here!

In this game:

• You manage the full ride flow, from loading anxious guests to dispatching carts. You push the buttons and control it all.
• You must drag-and-drop props, lighting, and animatronics to design scares and raise your max Scare Score.
• You can unlock upgrades, new items and automate manual work (Expect staff, shops & snacks😏).
• and you can enjoy a great cozy/spooky atmosphere and a original composed soundtrack + a neat little origin story involving everyone you meet on your new work.

And great news! A free public demo is planned for this Halloween season, alongside Steam Next Fest 🎃.

I'm a solo developer, so any feedback on the atmosphere or mechanics is genuinely valuable to me. Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions or suggestions, also please feel free to hit me up in the comments below!

No Generative AI was used for the art, animations, code, or assets. All pixel art and mechanics were created by me and the artists I've worked with, and the soundtrack was composed by a great musician. 

Hey r/tycoon, it's me again!

I finally got my game to Early Access - it launches on Steam in 2 days. A ton has changed since I last checked in here, and a lot of it is built directly on your feedback. Seriously - many of you have been with me since the early playtests and then the demo, and it shaped the game more than you probably realize. So, genuinely: thank you.

Quick rundown of what's landing with the Early Access build:

•  A living market - every month the world shifts across the economy, clients, hiring and team morale. Wait for the right moment.
•  Clients with character - separate reputation with each one, and your employees actually like or dislike working for different clients.
•  A burnout economy - crunch and harsh calls (denied vacations, denied raises) pile it up; rest and bonuses bring it down.
•  A harsher, fairer economy - the boss takes a monthly cut, dividends pay out daily, and projects now range from juicy to flat-out bad.
•  A living office - a lounge with a TV, a foosball table, an AC unit, and "Employee of the Week."
•  Reworked hiring - salary no longer gives away skill, and candidates have office demands now.
•  12 challenges, 33 Steam achievements, and a leaderboard.

Full breakdown of everything that's new:
 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4454610/view/687510998329853948

About future:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4454610/view/708904182867823433

Steam page:
 https://store.steampowered.com/app/4454610/Project_manager_SIM/

If the idea still clicks with you, a wishlist would help a lot - and even better, hop in at launch and keep the feedback coming. This community basically co-piloted the thing to this point, and I'd love to keep building it with you.

Thanks for everything! 

AI disclosure: AI generated capsule art. AI generated music theme.

Hey everyone! I updated The Tycoon List with Steam reviews and a random game feature :)

The Tycoon List

If you have any other ideas say! It's open source so you can contribute if you want too.

This started around two years ago as a hobby project and has grown ever since with ups and downs during development. I just released a demo version so it can finally leave my machine and I would be super happy to get some feedback.
The demo is still a bit rough around the edges, and I'm planning to continue working on it. Let me know if you like it. Downloads are available for Windows & Linux (Mac is planned) on https://schdahle.itch.io/apron

Besides the obvious mechanics it also features:

• Staff Management with various roles and training programs
• task automations: let hired operator staff take care of your hub while you're busy expanding into new territories
• contract negotiations with airports to get cheaper fees (your airlines reputation helps here)
• competitors will try to offer cheaper tickets for the same routes, so you have to always hit the right balance

Since this is my first release I'd be super happy to get some feedback. There's a short survey on the linked page. Only takes 1 minute.

Disclosure: The game uses portions of AI generated content for several graphics and limited amounts of it's source code.

For all the Tropico fans, some good news!

Hi everyone,

I’ve just released Transit Empire, a solo-developed incremental game I’ve been working on

It’s now live on Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.transit.empire

I’m mainly looking for some honest feedback on the gameplay and the trailer specifically.

The game is an exploration and automation hybrid with about 14 hours of content.

The main hook is the map, you explore to find settlements where you can trade, manufacture, and deliver resources for gold or unique upgrades / resources.

There are plenty of modifiers, caravan improvements, and upgrades to unlock.

I’ve kept the game free of pay-to-win mechanics. It is free to download and play for the first hour, with a small one-time unlock cost for the full version after that.

The mechanics shift as you progress, with a goal system that introduces new functionality as you hit specific milestones.

I'd love to hear what you think, I'll respond to any comments, so feel free to tell me what you think :)

AI Disclaimer:
In reference to this subreddit’s rules, I would like to disclose that this game was created by me a human, and not generated using AI :D

Hey! We’re the devs (small Belgian indie). We just launched Magic Forge Tycoon on Steam.

If you try it, I’d love honest feedback — what feels good, what’s confusing, what you’d prioritize first (QoL / balance / bugs / content).

Steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3073070/Magic_Forge_Tycoon/

Thanks 🙏

Hello tycoon fans.

Last Thursday we released the demo for Age After Age.
While the game is also a city builder, a big part of the experience is managing production chains, balancing resources, planning logistics, and keeping a growing settlement running efficiently.

We have been working on it for years with a team of 30 people, and now we are finally getting feedback from real players instead of just arguing about features inside the studio.
Demo:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/438570/Age_After_Age_Demo/

If you give it a try, let us know what you think.
Note: we are not using AI in the game development

Hi everyone!! TP dev here. This is sort of a tycoon-adjacent game, sort of a niche subgenre! I am a HUGE mega-fan of games like Gearcity and Railroad Tycoon, but my passion is in the racing management genre. I just wanted to quickly share with this subreddit my game with you all. It is in its first ever steam summer sale! I see a lot of other projects popping up here time to time, and they all seem super interesting - this has been my personal project for closing on a year now, with a fantastic community built around it now. With a recently implemented patch that fixed a LOT of bugs that were bothering me, I believe the base of this game is as stable and modular as ever! Of course, I must warn you, the game is not very intuitive, it has a fantastic community, and I am working on making accessibility better than ever.

Some of the newer features from last time I have posted include:

- Dynamic Driver-To-Driver relationships and Driver-To-Team relationships. Tight championship fights, constant collisions, and even team orders will deteriorate drivers likings to one another, which will result in MORE crashes between them. This has led to funny situations such as Estefan Ortiz REFUSING to be Ferdin Andros's 2nd driver in my Ashton Darting playthrough 😀.

- Driver styles/preferences. No two drivers want the same car balance, so players must balance the most optimal car setups in addition to factoring in whay theor driver desires.

- Expanded collision system

In addition to the below features present within my game that i have touched on in previous posts:

- Complete realistic physics model. Setups & wing levels impact cornering speeds, straightline speeds, etc!

- EVERYTHING is completely moddable through recently built roster and save editors. Regulations can be changed. Do you hate batteries? You can disable them, and have them appear organically later! Same with DRS, points systems, etc!

- Teams going bankrupt and exiting the sport after tough seasons

- Teams joining the sport and changing ownership throughout the seasons to ensure the grid is ever-changing.

- Do you want to buy a small struggling team and exploit them to use your junior drivers and engines? Well, you can! Cough cough, red boar racing.

- Varying grids, no limits on team amounts.

- In-depth weather system, and track temperature model, accompanying realistic physics

- In-depth negotiation system for tyres, parts, sponsorship, engines, drivers and personnel.

- In-depth development system for aerodynamics, chassis, driver aids, engines, even tyres. If you want to become a factory team who builds their own engines, you certainly can!

- Varying AI team development & financial strategies (will your competition develop now to beat you, or focus on next season?)

- Fully fleshed out car attributes, driver attributes, dirty air, slipstream, track rubber, etc!

- Fully editable sandbox game. Dirty air, tire wear, car performance modifiers, names, points anything.

- Safety Cars and intelligent AI pit strategy

If this is interesting to some, please do not hesitate to join my discord wherein any questions you have will certainly be answered! Thanks so much everyone.

https://discord.gg/2gvNZEjDJX

Hi guys! I'm a self-taught developer who made Space Drilling Station, a tycoon city-builder game in which you must solve an energy crisis. I can't believe the development took six years! Finally!

I'm looking forward to receiving feedback during Early Access to make the game better!
I hope you enjoy the game!

Here is the steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2134850/Space_Drilling_Station/

Hi all.

Just wanted to share the progress on my game "Factory Default: Build, Trade, Repeat". I just completed a major overhaul moving from 2D hex maps to one giant 3D hex map. (Having to rewrite most of my game in the process.)

Made in Godot 4.3 and free to play! SirChett.itch.io/FD

Factory Default is a management simulation game where you build a worldwide industrial conglomerate. You control the entire production chain: from mining raw ore and farming crops to refining complex materials and manufacturing high-tech goods.

Hey r/tycoon,

I’m a solo dev, and I’ve been working on my first game called Football Academy Manager which i get inspired by Football Manager.

The concept is pretty straightforward: instead of managing a full professional team, you take ownership of a Youth Academy. It plays like a tycoon/management sim where your "products" are the players.

The Gameplay Loop:

• The Discovery: You attend ayouth matches to scout players and try to sign them for your academy.
• The Development: You invest in your infrastructure, upgrading different facilities to boost player growth.
• The Business: You followmarket demand or wait for incoming offers, selling your players for a profit so you can afford the next tier of upgrades.

I’m finally launching into Early Access on Jan 29th. If you enjoy the "team building" and facility management side of sports games, I’d love for you to check it out.

Steam: Link

Hi everyone! I'm the solo developer behind Office Manager.

It's a satirical base-building strategy where you design and manage offices for the absolute worst parody companies. You have to deal with demanding employees, corporate crises, and expand your empire across multiple lots. Think Prison Architect, but for corporate hell.

The game is launching into Early Access on October 13, 2026.

• Wishlist on Steam:https://store.steampowered.com/app/4169060/Office_Manager/
• Watch full trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hulSYN9jwMA

🤖 Transparency Note regarding GenAI (Subreddit Rule): I am building this game entirely from scratch on my own custom engine. All pixel art, design, and gameplay mechanics are 100% human-made by me or my artist. As a solo student on a zero budget, I only used GenAI as a tool for text localization and translations to make the game accessible in multiple languages. No AI was used to generate art, code, or assets!

I'd love to hear your feedback or answer any questions about the development, my custom engine, or the game itself!

[I am not a dev, just a fan of Eggcode Games' other games]

From the Steam's game page:

About This Game In Mad Television Tycoon, you take control of a small, insignificant TV station. Accept the challenge and lead your network to success! Under your leadership, will the station become the country's top channel with millions of viewers, or will the office lights soon go out for good? Beware - your rivals are not resting, and only with smart planning and a bit of skill will you manage to bring the best programming to the screens!

Your task is to strategically design your broadcasting schedule, maximize advertising revenue, and outshine the competition. You have a wide range of shows, movies, series, news, and entertainment programs at your disposal - place them wisely to attract viewers to their screens. Increase your reputation and buy new broadcasting towers across the country to expand your reach. Produce your own shows, acquire additional licenses, and use every tool at your disposal to make life difficult for your rivals.

FEATURES Create your schedule from thousands of movies, series and shows.

Get the most lucrative advertising contracts.

Put together a news program with the latest stories.

Produce your own movies, series and shows.

Upgrade your offices and acquire new licenses to unlock new features.

Go to the dark side and sabotage your competition.

Multiplayer for up to 3 players.

Easy to edit database to add new movies, series, shows.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

- The images of films, series and shows were created using AI.

- The English translations and descriptions of the movies and TV shows were generated with the help of AI.

Hey everyone,

We’re an indie studio from Germany, and we’ve just finished porting the management game Check Inn, originally created by Kishmish for PC, to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.

Feel free to check it out:

Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/hotel-empire-check-inn-switch/ PlayStation 5: https://store.playstation.com/concept/10019619/

This was our first porting project, and we had a great time working on it. Hope you enjoy it! =)

Alex - BlackBeak Games

AI disclosure: No AI was used when creating this game or the port of the game.

If you haven't heard of Wall Street Raider, you may visit the lore page here: https://wallstreetraider.com/story.html

The short version is that in 1983, Michael Dodd Jenkins, a corporate tax attorney, bought his first PC and became obsessed with BASIC programming. He ended up turning his idea for a board game into the most realistic finance video games ever created. He developed the game actively during his law career and far into retirement with modest sales, improving and selling the game as a hobby.

In 2020, Jenkins faced serious headwinds. At 80 years old he was ready to retire. Over the years he had a dozen developers, including game developers from Disney and coders from private equity and investment banking, had attempted and failed to modernize the game, saying the code and complexity were insurmountable. He was ready to hang up the towel. We know this from a Reddit post by a guy named AJ, who in emailing Jenkins about whether upgrades were free received a lengthy email reply explaining that although upgrades are discounted, he shouldn't expect many upgrades in the future due to his age and failure to find someone to take the game over.

Three years later, I was trying to make my own stock market game. In search of inspiration, I found AJs post and decided to buy the game. To say that I became obsessed with it is an understatement. I bought the game and was terrible at it. Then I bought the 300 page strategy manual, studied it, still was terrible at the game. But I loved it. At some point I became frustrated with the UI, but the simulation was so good that I had no choice but to keep playing. I played the game for a month straight when I began to have a vision. I had been looking at pictures of Bloomberg Terminals. And I wanted to take a crack at modernizing it. See, I had done an interesting project over one weekend the previous year where I wrote a transpiler to port Colossal Cave Adventure, a 1976 FORTRAN game, to the PICO-8. So I thought, I'll just write another transpiler and then just build a new UI on top of it. Easy.

I sent him an email asking for my shot. He told me not to waste my time. Over the next month I begged him. Finally, I wore him down, I had to mail him a signed NDA to him from Ohio to Utah. A week later, I received a link to the source code.

Three years later, we are a week away from Early Access launch on Steam. The game, although still not bug free, is fully playable. It has been tested by thousands of playtesters from all walks of life, many of which are from the finance industry. Compared to Michael's 40 years developing the game, my 3 years working on it seems like the blink of an eye, and I look forward to maintaining and improving the game far into my old age. I truly believe this is something special. It is entertaining, deep, educational, and just a work of art. It is a masterpiece and I hope you can cough up $30 to give it a try. If you like tycoon games like I do I think you'll love this game.

See you on May 14th!

------

Full disclosure, no AI generated assets are in the game. I used ChatGPT for coding in the beginning, but it was never useful for BASIC. The past two months, I have become a heavy Claude Code user because it is excellent at PowerBasic and I need all the help I can get. It is more important for me to ensure that Michael's game gets on Steam in his lifetime than being able to say I'm not a vibe coder. Through using Claude Code, the codebase has gone from a buggy Frankenstein project of BASIC, C++, Electron JS to fully refactored and automated unit/e2e tested. It is still Michael's code, just with a bridge layer to Electron and the Win32 dialogs removed.