Who doesn’t love simulation/strategy games? There’s a great thinking game to making moves in these titles that allow your movements to help you make it rich and/or wind up successful. Titles like SimCity might be old in the current gaming era but we still love to dive back into it and craft small towns that move like real ones. Developer Dapper Penguin Studios though has their own city simulator-like game and it’s one that intrigued us early on. Titled Rise of Industry, we dove into this simulation title and were quite surprised at the end result. Find out what we thought of Rise of Industry in our full review down below!

Rise of Industry is a city building simulation with one focus. Take a small city and make it as large as humanly possible. Make tough choices that will either help your city earn money/resources or end up failing and entering the dreaded red zone. Be prepared for any situation to arise though. A city is a living breathing thing. Sometimes things won’t go according to plan but only those with skills can make any situation work in their favor. Rise of Industry lets you feel how it is to be a business entrepreneur and you’ll love every second if you love simulation games like SimCity.

Rise of Industry has players assuming the role of an entrepreneur aiming for one thing. Raising a city up from the ground up to make a city prosper! You will need to manage your money and skills to build city resources to bring in constant economy and help your city thrive. Build farms and lumber yards and/or refineries to grab from the Earth itself. Each choice you make will either help your city boom or lead it to financial ruin. Will you make the necessary moves to help your city flourish? Find out if you have what it takes in Rise of Industry!

Being an entrepreneur in real life is rough. Fronting your own cash to build up an empire can either make you insanely rich or leave you with debt. That’s why us gamers prefer to play simulation titles like SimCity to see if our city building skills could truly work for profit. That’s why when we got a hold of Rise of Industry, we couldn’t help but feel giddy as we saw how impressive this game was on paper. How did Rise of Industry play out? Did it rise to expectations—we couldn’t help it—or did it collapse like some of our in-game creations? Time to find out in our review of Rise of Industry for the PC!

Similar to most simulation titles, Rise of Industry aims to let you become a true creator and watch your work lead to results. Players will take over a small town and must build it up from scratch to make the city profitable. This might seem simple but Rise of Industry is filled to the brim with components to help you build your city up right. Your primary goal is to build and build to make your city rich and grow from a small community into a thriving metropolis. Be prepared though, folks; Rise of Industry doesn’t make this task simple as there are a load of things to learn and do.

Depending on your mode choice—more on that latter— Rise of Industry caters to those who think ten steps ahead in a business format. Build up your lumber industry and make roads that make transport easier will allow the town to get lumber for new houses and other system that much easier. Build up farms and you can manage their produce by selling in bulk to opposite cities for more money and to make a friendship with other areas. Rise of Industry is chock full of dynamic mechanics that make every choice have weight to it. If you notice your town is in dire need of more resources, your best bet could be to increase buildings for that resource or maybe change up strategies and build other investments to help with finance. While you make these choices however, Rise of Industry keeps you in check with plenty of random events that might help your city succeed or help run it into the ground quicker. Equally, the AI in Rise of Industry aims to make your town look pathetic in comparison to its own meaning you need to be quick about what decisions you make and know how to best handle a situation.

Rise of Industry has a ton of menus and systems to go through and it will be a rough time for some gamers. Players can unlock skills and abilities while playing to help them with specific business ventures as well as helping out via trade talks or business etiquette in general. It can be dizzying how many ways there are to handle your city in Rise of Industry but equally that’s half the fun. You’ll often fail—and we mean fail—to make a city work, but those who like to learn from failure will realize how to best handle a mistake in another run later. Though, there are other ways to learn and that leads us to another element we liked about Rise of Industry, the different gameplay modes.

Besides a career mode where you rise from nothing to the top, there is also a sandbox mode. In the sandbox mode, players can build up their cities however they like and see growth without losing income. It might seem like a silly way to play—unless you just want to create giant cities filled with millions of trucks moving from place to place—but it allows you to practice your business skills. Rise of Industry does also have a tutorial mode that will show you the basics but it doesn’t go extremely in depth and leads you to just kind of understand how the game works. Sandbox mode is ideal for those who want to practice and see what works and what doesn’t. Then you can enter the career mode, make a million decision on how to start it up and then watch as your business skills either make you rich or make you realize you’re no entrepreneur.

Another strength of Rise of Industry is the graphics. Rise of Industry looks incredible with a surreal amount of detail in everything. Cities look cartoonish but have a real living feeling as you watch cars zoom around to work or to factories for supply runs. Equally, watching lumber yards of energy plants function is so enjoyable as they puff out smoke or have machines turning. Rise of Industry makes you feel like you’re watching a city grow. To be honest, it’s a satisfying feeling that we enjoyed non-stop.

If we had any gripes with Rise of Industry, then we’d say it comes from the difficulty itself. While we understand simulation games are meant to be just that, simulation, Rise of Industry has a lot to learn and it can be quite tough. Even with the simple tutorial, we felt lost at seeing so many different menus and options to choose from. Even starting career mode can take several minutes as there are dozens of options to choose from before you even begin the game! Rise of Industry isn’t afraid to show it takes city building seriously. Just be ready to learn through hard work and diligence...

Rise of Industry is a game geared for those who loved SimCity and/or Cities XL. Watching your small city thrive from the actions you made is a truly invigorating feeling just like seeing your cash flow due to all the income you earned. The problem with Rise of Industry is that it’s geared towards a very specific gaming audience. If you’re someone who hates micromanaging in games, then you’re going to hate Rise of Industry as that is basically 99% of the game. Equally, Rise of Industry is very technical and it will take some time to master how each skill tree and structure can truly benefit you in the long run. Rise of Industry can be a truly amazing strategic simulator but only if that is a genre that interests you. Though we will say that thanks to the impressive amount of detail in visuals and how the overall mechanics allow you to truly do what you want, Rise of Industry is an amazing game. We whole heartily recommend Rise of Industry to those who love building cities and watching them boon.

With Sims all but gone, Rise of Industry shows us that there’s hope for future city simulation titles. While SimCity has paved the way for other titles like it, Rise of Industry feels like a more serious simulator with aspirations of being a title that proves any company can make a good simulation game, as long as they pour their heart and soul into it. We think many of you gamers who love SimCity-like games will truly enjoy Rise of Industry, but we want to hear from you! Are you going to buy Rise of Industry? Let us know in the comments below and for all your game review needs, be sure to keep stuck to us here at Honey’s Anime!