PREVIEW : Cartel Tycoon (PC)
Cartel Tycoon
The game called Cartel Tycoon. The name already explains what it’s all about. It’s a new city builder/strategy game with a rather “illegal” setting as you’re the Boss of a cartel and with diplomatic and violent ideas you’re trying to grow your organization. The game was created by Moon Moose and published by Tiny Build.
Smalltalk
As specified RTS games aren’t my cup of coffee which indicates that I usually try to dodge them. But with this game, I had an unexpected urge to play it, probably because I watched the entire Narcos series in one day and needed to see how good of a drug lord I would be if I chose to lead a cartel. Jokes aside, this game looks and plays very carefully despite it still being in Early Access. It offers cutscenes with a hero and a pretty lengthy campaign as far as I could tell. Let’s take a better look!
RTS and the tutorial:
You get a dedicated taskbar and a design that describes everything in detail. Another bonus is the fact that now you can hire leaders that can help out in several activities such as transporting goods, perhaps have a 20% revenue boost for a short time or be able to perform a robbery. All of these bonuses made the game a lot more understandable and doable.
The map is split into many cities and each city does have a Leader. Your main aim is to get their respect by performing various tasks that will be performed on your lower left side of your display. Lastly, I should note that violence isn’t the main theme of the game. It does not praise the violent appearance of that lifestyle. You do have some alternatives. You can send a particular member of your cartel to burn some buildings from the other cartels, you can even command another one of your members to kill an enemy. These are the main choices when it comes to violence. The developers added gang wars that would begin once you have left one of your cities or buildings for a long time. You can capture it back if you got enough firepower which is why you should invest in some great lieutenants. One last occasion of violence occurs when you’re out of legal money which means that you cannot spend anything. The end comes with the game over screen where the game reveals that you tried to flee the land but got shot close to the border.
Economy and Efficiency:
The statistical features of the game are the powerful point of the game. I loved the various options when it comes to illicit money laundry. There are quite a lot of buildings that do get the job done, going from placebo Taxi offices to Jewel stores or even Circuses. To go from raw goods to legal cash is a long journey. First up you have to grow raw product on a farm, then a warehouse takes the Opium and stores it. If a lab is within reach the warehouse will then bring the Opium to the Airfield or Seaport. You can then apparently ship it via plane or ship but the D.E.A might be smelling around and investigate which will force you to stop using these buildings for some days. So then you have to hide the product somewhere between herbs, coffee, or spices which I do think a very deep and exciting aspect of the game. Hiding a small number of drugs in a box with coffee and smart things like that. These act as storage multipliers with 3, 5, and 6 units respectively. After finishing a tour the drug money will be stored at the airport, harbour, or border post. You then have to transport the money to a bank to launder it. Then it is yours to do with as you please. Keep in mind that in each area you do get highlighted efficiency areas and combined with the efficiency ratings from the buildings you can achieve a pretty tactical system of production. Once again the addition of gang wars and robberies will serve the player a lot but what I liked was the fact that you can speak to the lawyer of the city and ask for some help which can be about D.E.A confiscations, Loyalty, or even asks for a sum of money if you’re in deep pain.
Graphics / Audio:
The Visuals aren’t anything new. It seems like a regular RTS/City building game. On the contrary, it does look like a nice and tropical Latin country.
Audio / Soundtrack:
The audio is pretty basic and very little as well. The explosions do have a nice punch to them and the cars do sound like regular high-revving 80’s vehicles but other than that it’s nothing new.
Bugs / Glitches / Crashes:
In around (Steam and Dedicated Cartel Tycoon Launcher) 13 hours of building my FLAWLESS drug empire in Latin America, I experienced no bugs, glitches or game-ending crashes at all. Truly a stable game considering it is still in Early Access.
Conclusion:
The tutorial got much more user-friendly compared to the previous version I reviewed some months ago. The story feels a lot more imaginable than before where the entire storyline was structured around speech bubbles and text. Overall I can only give this game a very good rating, especially for Narcos and City Builder fans.
