Big Ambitions Preview

There are not many things in the world that would make you feel sorry for a landlord. To feel a sense of empathy for someone whose sole purpose is to demand monthly revenue from people in return for said people’s accommodation in a residence owned by the ‘lord’. Granted, it’s a headache if the people in question don’t pay the revenue and decide to squat both metaphorically and literally in the residence. Besides that, it would be a stretch to think solemnly of the little people that own multiple homes during a housing crisis. But the Early Access game Big Ambitions will treat you to the experience of the hard-working monopoly man.

Big Ambitions is a tycoon management videogame developed by Hovgaard Games. After the death of your father, you claim an inheritance with a caveat that you move out and get a job in the Big Apple. As you get started, your economically savvy uncle instructs you on how to use your inheritance to start-up businesses and exploit the market in your favour. From flower shops to law firms, your portfolio will eventually grow — to a point where you’ll own every building in New York City like a mythical, over-indulgent, crime-free property owner. Or Mr. Fischoeder from Bob’s Burgers if he was the one who owned the business as well. Although the endgame will turn you into what filler-busters have nightmares about, you’ll spend most of the game speeding down the wrong side of the road to get to the wholesalers.

Starting off with a gift shop, you’ll eventually be able to buy businesses and properties. With a selection of businesses to choose from. It’s more buffet than Buffett as the key to increasing your daily profits is to satisfy the needs of the public in each district. What worked before may not work until the hype grows again keeping us as the player constantly on our toes. However, if you don’t exploit the system, you’ll go through droughts which will leave you in the red.

Employees you hire will have their own skill level and needs — the latter you yourself also will have to manage — which falls to you to placate for top satisfaction and productivity. While in the beginning, their customer service skills are less than stellar, the option to re-train them is open to you from word-go with the exception that you have to pay for it, and they cannot work during that time.

As Big Ambitions is played in a top down perspective, the graphics are a little default. Textures on buildings are more detailed — like bricks and billboards on the sides of structures — as they’re closest to the camera, while cars, people, and other assets are instantly recognisable but when zoomed in; the models are simple. Where the visuals betray the player is when you’re swivelling the camera through buildings. As the game is set in a compact metropolitan city, buildings are way too close together — all accessible to some degree — so clicking on the right building is essential. When moving through buildings, they disappear but can be accessed, leading you to misclick and enter a random shop.

The animations can also betray the game’s immersion as your character’s movements can sometimes be cartoonish whether from them having stiff backs or their knees raise a little too high. It also doesn’t help that driving — with realistic physics and fuel gauge, as well as a radio filled with random tracks plucked from SoundCloud— accidents are more like playing dodgem cars. But — on later reflection — incorporating the mechanic of totalling the very thing that you rely on to play the game, not to mention the fact that you would die from a serious collision, would be an unlikeable addition to what’s already a slightly stressful game.

The amount of patience needed to run your multiple businesses can test some players, especially restocking which thankfully is resolved when you unlock warehouses and delivery trucks — also unlocking new challenges with import/exporting. Overall, the game never lets you slow down with constant flash fires needing a cup of water to extinguish.

Once a week, a casino boat will come into dock and take people into international waters for around six in-game hours. While you’re meant to play fairly, you can revert back to a previous save if you lose money. Essentially turning the favour always on your side and a wallet as fat as a cash cow.   

Once you’ve taken complete control of your finances, you’re now ready to take up the most boring part of the game, decorating. Every property (except rented residential properties you own) can be painted, tiled, and furnished with disregard to any theme or colour palette. You can meticulously design a template for a burger franchise with booths, pick colours that aren’t copyrighted and lay them out in thirds; or you could just have a business with a burger shopfront and a partitioned back entrance where you sell expensive jewellery and cigars.

A complaint I can see people first playing Big Ambitions having is that gameplay can be slow at times. With the repetition of driving back and forth to the same wholesaler and stores may result in some players looking for more passive income like investing in the banks or becoming landlords. This concludes the opening statement of feeling sorry for landlords. Unlike the fictional representation of old money Mr Fischoeder, landlords are just people who couldn’t hack it in the real world of business, and I truly feel sorry for them.