Title: Party Hard Tycoon
Available On: PC
Developer: Pinokl Games and Kverta Limited
Publisher: tinyBuild
Genre: Indie Simulation and Strategy game
Official Site: https://www.tinybuild.com/partyhardtycoon
Release Date: Thursday 19 October 2017 (Early Access)
Where To Buy It: Steam
Prepare to get disappointed in the game for the price that you paid for. If it was not so overpriced, I would say it is a cute indie game that would fill up your time when you cannot decide on a game to play. Party Hard Tycoon would do so much better as a mobile game, rather than a steam game that misguides users in thinking you have a lot of control over what goes on in your parties.
Anyway, Party Hard Tycoon starts off with a chat popping up which asks if you want any help. As a newbie, I eagerly accept the tutorial, but I find myself wishing I did not. There was too much text and the photos that they sent alongside the writing in the chat made the tutorial feel clunky and lazy. Especially since your character ‘replies’ to them. It felt long-winded and in reality, it did not even explain much. After they explain a couple of items, the game throws you in and tells you to host a party. But I found myself confused, wondering what some of the features are, as I have already had my tutorial. Or so that is what I thought.
To make a great party you have to have a theme to the venue, but only certain themes work well together. An example would be the hip-hop theme goes well with the tiny club. The best combinations create more hype and more people will attend your party. However, If they do not work, no-one will turn up to the party and you will lose money and fans. Fans help you get more people in the club.
The next step is to choose what staff you are hiring and how much to charge people to enter the club. You only get three staff to choose from and I found it better to choose people that do shows and built up hype so that you can bring them into the club. Another tip is to always have security, since some cause problems and create dislikes. Managing the staff at the party was a nightmare. I mostly spent the time spamming the fill all tables, so that I can get people to stay. If anyone saw an empty table they would leave the party immediately. How does that make any sense? The same would apply to if they heard no music, or if the drinks were too expensive for them. Problem with this is at times attendees would go round the building and stand outside in a corner and complain. Just why?
Before you host the party, you have to decorate the place, but things tend to stay where they are and it was annoying that you could not fully decorate a place because it was already done for you. The most you could do was put speakers, lights, food, and about twenty decorations that did not go with the style of the club.
After hosting a few more parties, players will get thrown back into the tutorial again where they tell you the rest of the information that you should have learned half an hour ago. At this point, I barely glanced at it, since I had to figure everything out myself. Once that was finished with, the game is yours to do what you want with it.
That is it. After that, you pretty much wait for parties to finish and rack up the cash. It was really repetitive and I could not see myself, or anyone for that matter, playing a full in-game year of this. To be honest, I did not want to play past January. The game just felt empty. The most you could do was tell the staff what to do and turn on the lights. Party Hard Tycoon needs more things for players to actually manage, or else it just becomes dull and tedious. The only thing I really liked was the little quests you get, but even they were limited. They mostly created problems at parties where you would not do as well, but it was just something to work towards, other than the same thing over and over again. You also get a reward after it.
There is not much else I can really touch on with this game as it lacked so much. The social media leveling skill really is not worth my time going over. It is not a bad game, but it just is not good and players expect more from a game that calls itself a Tycoon. Hopefully, Party Hard Tycoon will be adding more content since it is in Early Access and I can revisit it again in a years time. That may be just wishful thinking though.
