Review (Early Access) | Festival Tycoon - Ride High, Sell Low
Festival Tycoon is an indie simulation game available on PC where you get to manage and create your very own festivals. As a long-time fan of Tycoon style games, I was eager to give this game an in-depth look and it did not disappoint.
Remember large groups of people?
WILD TIMES!
As someone who doesn’t own a computer that is designed specifically for gaming, the performance of this game was surprisingly smooth bar one or two incidents in the entire time I played. If you have a device that is even somewhat catered towards running PC games then you probably will not see any issues. The controls of the game on mouse and keyboard are extremely easy to pick up, even if you’re not an avid PC gamer. So prior experience with the genre and extremely powerful tech are not a necessity to enjoy this management sim.
The story of the game is simple, run a successful festival and make a profit. This idea sparked my competitive streak and I soon found myself determined to make my business successful. Who was I competing with? I have no idea but the atmosphere of the game created a desire to succeed.
*EXTREMELY AXL ROSE VOICE*: WHO HERE LIKES… (*checks notes*) AL-CO-HOL!
A multitude of smaller objectives are born from the simple goal of holding a successful festival and if you have seen the FYRE Festival documentary you will know many of these objects are very important in satisfying your festival-goers. There are many objectives within each section of the game that you need to achieve but the main goal remains the same - success and profit. Even though there can be multiple objectives to be juggled at once, they are easy to follow and just as easy to tick off your to do list. If the game wasn’t as user friendly as it is, it could be extremely confusing to keep track of everything you need to do. The tutorial, an aspect of games usually known for being simplistic, was so involved that I felt like I truly had learned everything I needed to know before starting the real game.
Festival Tycoon also has extensive settings that you can fiddle with to improve accessibility and to cater the game to suit you. However, there is a key setting that feels like it is missing and this is especially a shame since it is the only aspect of the game that needs adjusting. The problem is how multiple windows work; when you open up anything new in the game such as the “build mode”, a new window will open which is great. Then, you move over to another area to check something and another window opens but the previous window doesn’t close. You can very quickly find your screen littered with multiple windows and you can barely see your festival. Although this may be a biting indictment of my tab management and bad googling habits there should really be an option to toggle auto-closing windows in settings to avoid this.
The first causality of every festival is orderly queues.
Festival Tycoon lets you go into great depth when it comes to planning, designing and running your own festival. You get to choose which fictional companies will sponsor your festival, you need to book bands and satisfy their needs as well as ensuring that guests are happy. You can check the statistics of each individual guest to observe their needs and then use this information to improve your festival. There is a festival social media feed that appears when your event is live and you can use this to check guest comments too. There are profit margins and ticket sales that you need to constantly think about too. To put it bluntly, you’re the boss and anything that goes wrong is on your shoulders. It could become overwhelming but the game is always ready to help you if you get stuck.
The game is surprisingly educational too as it goes into a lot of detail about what makes a good festival and what makes a great festival. Festival Tycoon even begins to feel truly systemic at points as the many aspects of running a festival in the game are connected with one another, such as how profit margins can be heavily affected by pre-sale ticket issues. I’ve heard of many of these things about real-life festivals and general discussions but it was fascinating to see these economic and social principles unfold before me. By being able to learn from a tangible source and getting my hands on it without ruining someone financially has furthered my understanding of how important these things are to a business.
Top tip: WE ALWAYS NEED MORE PORTA POTTYS!
All of the “management” decisions aside, you also need to get your metaphorical hands dirty to keep your festival at the highest quality. It’s not a simple case of build, book and relax. You need to assign tasks to different employees at your event and you are in control of cleaning up certain areas of your festival as they inevitably get dirty. This brought in a new section of gameplay that I wasn’t expecting but was happy to accept as I was worried the game had begun to feel repetitive whilst setting up the festival. The game keeps you on your toes, as managing any large-scale event would.
If you’re not interested in keeping up with the demands of college students on break, parents reliving their youth or diva band members, then you can always go into sandbox mode and that is heaps of entertainment just waiting to happen. With no restrictions put on you, you get to set how much money you have to spend and you pretty much get to do whatever you want. You can also check your sandbox scores against other players in the Festival Tycoon community if you’re feeling competitive.
I really like the game, but I gotta say these pre-order bonuses are getting out of hand.
When I managed to create and run a successful festival, I felt extremely satisfied. This feeling was created through the amount of work the game makes you put in and how much you need to invest into creating the festival for it to be a success. If the game was a simple case of, build, book, ? , PROFIT, the sense of achievement would undoubtedly be lesser if not non-existent. Festival Tycoon creates a unique sense of “I did this” that I’ve seldom felt with other game titles with a similar concept and it does it very well.
