Dougging it

Remember Doug from the movie

Lesson 1 The Rise of Industry. Gross National Product. Risk of rain cheats. Total value of goods and services produced by a country during a year. Laissez- Faire. Policy that governments should interfere as little as possible in the nation's economy.

Up? My response to any game that has players build something from nothing is pretty similar to when he sees a squirrel. Ears up, and little care for whatever else is happening around me. There’s one caveat — it must be somewhat grounded in reality. Factorio, no. Rimworld, yes. Seeing Rise of Industry for the first time definitely was one of those “Squirrel!” moments, and my ears have been sitting perky for the two long years since. Now that it is out, it delivers on almost all counts. Almost…
Rise of Industry is a business tycoon game, but not your average one. Rather than building a thriving farm, running a zoo, a tavern or a chain of pizza restaurants, you’re in charge of a 'consumer products manufacturing and selling' company. Think Apple, but then with actual apples that grow on a farm, or apple smoothies, or ceramics, or cars. You can focus on just one industry, or dabble in all of them. You can focus on supplying a single town with your goods, or all of them, though each town will require you to purchase a license for doing business in their territory. If an AI player snaps it up before you, it’s hard to wrench it from their control.

Satisfy demand

Whatever choice you make, you’ll be building production chains. A lot of them, all the time. In fact, the name Rise of Production Chain Management would have fit the game perfectly, though it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. The early chains are easy enough. From apple to apple smoothie you’ll need to provide water to the apple orchard, apples to the drinks factory and smoothies to the shop in town. Much of the management is automated, it really is as simple as it sounds.
In contrast, building cars requires something like 6 components, which are made with 12 components, which are made with 24 components, which are made with… and… and… Ugh, my brain aches! Admittedly I haven’t gotten far enough to find out, but the chain is incredibly deep. And as each factory and farm has a limited output, you’ll often be building multiple factories of the same type to satisfy product demand. Supplying a single clothes shop with summer clothes requires well over a dozen factories, as well as half a dozen farms. Imagine what you will need to do to build a single car. Staggering.
If the above makes you worried about managing all those chains, there’s actually a fair bit of automation that will take care of the nitty gritty once you’ve set things up. Most production facilities will hand off or acquire goods without your intervention and automated warehouses do a great job of distributing and buffering goods for facilities in their area. There are things that can upset any carefully created balance, but generally you’re safe to focus on new chains once things are running smoothly.

Beyond production chains

While production chain management is Rise of Industry’s bread and butter, the sandwich filling is a bit on the light side. I suspect many gamers will enjoy Rise of Industry’s production chain management to such an extent that they do not really need anything else. I’ve sure kept myself busy with it, but I have to admit I am looking for more depth now that I'm familiar with the game’s workings. The game has laid the groundwork for other aspects, but few are fleshed out enough to be enjoyed.
Most of the little quests that pop are largely forgettable. Unless you’re asked to level up a city you’re not likely to go out of your way to upset your carefully balanced yeast production line to satisfy a temporary increase in demand due to a new 'model’ of yeast arriving on the scene. Nor is it reasonable for the game to ask you to build an entire production line for a one-off sale of goods to a town asking for a good you don’t already produce. The auctions fall prey to similar issues — you’ll pay attention when a regional license is up for grabs but most other auctions are unlikely to get your blood flowing.
AI players were a late arrival to the game and they feel like they are in an infant stage. AI players aren’t great at creating layouts and roads, they seem to be terrible at doing research beyond the lower two tiers, and they will happily pay huge sums in auctions that they will never be able to recoup. Currently there is no way to really compete with them either, or an active way get rid of them, so they’re basically hoarding regional licenses that you will be much better able to make use of. Dapper Penguin have plans for hostile takeovers and stocks, but really these should have been in already.
Oddly, towns that level up will barely increase the amount of goods that they require. 376293 inhabitants will eat a lot more chicken dinners than 123501, no? I would have loved for the game to make me scramble to keep up with an ever growing demand.

Unfulfilled potential

But, let’s keep things in perspective — Rise of Industry is a good game. It can be enjoyed without any of these things. The game is filled to the brim with clever ideas that make building a growing, gathering and manufacturing empire an entertaining proposition. The options to manage distribution alone will put a smile on the face of even the most OCD-suffering gamer. Keeping trucks trucking at a good pace without getting caught in one traffic jam after another can be a game in itself, one that becomes more fun when you start experimenting with trains to lower the pressure on your roads.
In truth, Rise of Industry would have been an excellent game, were it not for the bugs that keep plaguing it, some of them game-breaking. Since release, I have had factories not being able to receive goods due to missing entry points, buildings spamming trucks to get goods but not picking them up, towns changing their name to 'regional center' and 'Beach month!', and quests lowering demand that did not come back until I loaded the game. The devs are incredibly active in squashing these, but new ones keep popping up and new game versions tend to break save-games.
I am confident that the game will stabilize over time but I cannot help feeling Rise of Industry should have stayed in Early Access a month or two longer. As it stands, the game is bursting from the seams with unfulfilled potential.

Dapper Penguin Studios’ logistics management sim is stepping foot out of Early Access into the great wide world.It’s been in Early Access for just over a year now, constantly updating and adding new content, and Rise of Industry shows no signs of stopping. Harking back to the tycoon games of old, Rise of Industry is a beautiful blend between SimCity and Factorio. As an early 20th-century industrialist, you must build up an empire capable of revolutionizing an industry. You’ll build towards one of three prototype models, alone or against AI opponents, much like a race to scientific victory in Civilisation.Like any good empire, Rise of Industry is constantly growing and evolving, and its visual roadmap details months of planned content long beyond the May release. Steam’s listing even includes a promise from the developers: “ We are extremely active in the community and we will always be open with our plans for the future of the game”, it reads. From what I’ve seen, this is certainly the case.Confectionery - the sweetest fruit of the research treeThe official Rise of Industry wiki is never more than a few clicks away, as well as a short series of video tutorials. The ever-changing nature of the game’s development does mean that these tips and guides are often rendered inert within a few months, however.

Modding support is also being rolled out, and there are even a few cheats for those that like to play fast and loose with the rules.All of this somewhat compensates for what is possibly Rise of Industry’s biggest shortcoming: the in-game assistance is a little sparse. There is a tutorial that runs you through the basics, but it can't capture everything and tooltips can be sporadic from there on, often only appearing to tell you something that was already obvious. Heading off the beaten track to look for answers is no substitute for a robust, detailed tutorial, but you’re welcomed with open arms by a wealth of community knowledge. The official Discord group, which can also be accessed from the main menu, has hundreds of active users, with developers and testers readily available to assist you, solve issues, and listen to new ideas.Know your market, each town has different demands.Rise of Industry is somewhat like learning an instrument. It’s complex and unwieldy the first time you sit down with it, but put in the hours to master it and you’ll be surprised by what can be achieved. In this way, Rise of Industry is symbolic of its namesake acronym; RoI, or ‘Return on Investment’, measures the output of something based on what you invest into it.

Until you’ve invested a few hours and digested the wiki, you won’t get much out of it. Soon after, however, the return grows exponentially. Systems start to click and the reward of turning a profit stacks up as you progress through the many research trees.You can customize each new empire, too, fine-tuning the difficulty to match your preferences. Want to adjust the upkeep cost of buildings or the difficulty of events? Want to disable terraforming or traffic management?

You can do that, too. It’s an incredibly user-friendly feature of Rise of Industry, and one that makes for a malleable experience. At the higher difficulties, the game is about tailoring your supply to meet the demand of the local towns, constantly having to adapt in order to survive. But the option to kick back, disable AI opponents and expand at your leisure is delightful.

The calming, peaceful music eases you into a laid back mood and wicks away some of the stress like a nurse assisting a surgeon’s heart transplant. Even on the smaller maps, games will last the best part of 10 hours, and I quickly lost an entire Saturday to one campaign before I knew what had happened. This is testament to the rich, engaging gameplay, and the level of variation in a successful empire. As you research new areas of business, you’ll expand into a wide variety of industries, from steelworks to textiles, furniture to fast food, and so on.Ah, suburban bliss!The low poly appeal of Rise of Industry is best appreciated up close. When viewed at close range, everything from plumes of chimney smoke to bustling traffic is crisp and clean, but this charm loses some luster when you zoom out.

At a distance, Rise of Industry still looks good but no better than that. The UI can also range wildly, at times hiding vital information behind clunky menus. Once you learn your way around the interface’s complexities, though, you can practically make it sing for you. Perpetuum jazzile.

Pressing ALT, for example, brings up a particularly clean view of each farm and factory represented by a traffic light bubble. This is invaluable, allowing for a quick scan of your empire at the macro level to ensure everything is running smoothly. It’s a shame the entire interface can’t look this clear, but it’s understandable, given how much data there is to process.Despite an extremely steep learning curve, Rise of Industry will keep you occupied for hours to come.

If you can overcome the barrier to entry, you’re bound to enjoy your time here, especially if you like having your management skills put to the test. We need your helpRunning a website like The Digital Fix - especially one with over and an - costs lots of money and we need your help. As advertising income for independent sites continues to contract we are looking at other ways of supporting the site hosting and paying for content.You can help us by using the links on The Digital Fix to buy your films, games and music and we ask that you try to avoid blocking our ads if you can.

You can also help directly for just a few pennies per day via our Patreon - and you can even pay to have ads removed from the site entirely.