Project Highrise: Hands on Preview

Before I was handed the copy of this game, I had never heard of it, as it isn't the sort of game I would actively follow. Increasingly, it would seem, that the games I pay little to no attention to, seem to be unbelievably interesting! At first it seemed it would be a breeze, the sort of game that I would pick up instantly and just fly through without any issues; instead I found a delightfully enjoyable challenge!

So what is Project Highrise? To put it simply it’s a game that revolves around you simply constructing a highrise building. What you put in it, however, is up to you. Residential rooms of various quality as well as offices, shops and cafes to name but a few. Within these rooms, however, you can put in a variety of different services. For example in the smallest office you can select from roughly four types of company, each one with its own requirements and needs. One might need a phone cable hooked up to it, and another might request that you have a copier service in your basement.

Did I mention you can build underground? Well, you can. Down there, however, you will be installing your services, such as your powerlines, copier services, storerooms, fuse box and the various meters for power, phones, electricity and water.

Surprisingly, the real challenge is trying to balance everything out to make it cost effective. More than once I have made a quick decision and seen myself plummet into the red, losing money faster than earning it. The main reason for this, normally, is the pure and simple fact I attempted to expand far too quickly, often constructing entire floors simply because I could afford it, not even thinking once about the maintenance costs!

The game also comes with a large selection of scenarios, each one is actually rather unique. Often locking out certain things or enabling others earlier so you can’t use a simple meta tactic to accomplish all of the goals across multiple levels. I frequently found myself pausing as I tried to figure out what to do next, should I place down an office? Maybe get a loan so I can quickly build a few things in order increase my overall profit? The choices I made often impacting me throughout the scenario, either I was unable to build a larger structure on that floor as I hadn’t noticed I had used up all the room, or I wasn’t able to build a plaza as large was I wanted in order to unlock more goodies!

The progression system is also fantastic, requiring you to build a variety of unique rooms to unlock new things. For instance, you need an artist to even allow you to start constructing paintings, sinking points into him will allow you to unlock better statues and artworkin order to increase and maximize your prestige, which in turn allows you to unlock larger variants of your buildings or entirely new ones! Attracting visitors is a great way to progress, but you often find that you run the risk of building so many shops that you thrive off of the unstable income of visitors; rather than the stable and guaranteed income of the various offices you could build instead.

Overall, I found this game to be above and beyond my expectations, I see progressing well after its launch and with Steam Workshop being available, I am drooling over just what the modding community might be able to do. If I was to be honest, I am rather hoping an Evil Genius style mod comes out.

This game has great potential and a fantastic and active development team behind it that really want their product to succeed. What's more the game isn’t over hyped and I doubt anyone intending to play it will have wildly high expectations.

In its current state I suggest that anyone who is looking for a challenging management game to, at the very least, look at the game on the S\team store; it’s a game that all of the simulation and management fanatics would love, it’s also a very user friendly way to get into the management genre if you have never played it before.
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