Software Inc. Review (Ottomic)
Okay, so close your eyes, and picture Game Dev Story. Cool game, right? Okay, now I want you to feed it this handful of steroids. Look! It's turned into Game Dev Tycoon! hey it's fun yeah? Now give it this other fistful. Look, it's Mad Games Tycoon! Now give it this entire jar. More! Use this shovel here. MORE! MORE!! JUST CHUCK THOSE SUCKERS IN. USE THE EXCAVATOR. MMOOOOORRREEEEE!!! And that's how you get Software Inc.
If you ever wondered just how far the software development tycoon subgenre of games could be pushed, SI has you covered. From a single dev outfit to a massive megacorporation extending its tentacles to every facet of human existence, the player will make their way through a zillion interconnected factors that result in an impressively simulated ecosystem that, in turn, will shape itself and influence the player's decisions. Forget about just making games, how about creating your software empire on the back of an office software suite? Or an operating system? Hell, why not develop the devices this software will run in? No, no, wait, how about developing the TECHNOLOGY every other company in the space will need to use and just take a backseat while you sip on those sweet, sweet licensing costs?
Okay, have you checked what the market trends are? Is there a new technology breakthrough coming soon? Have you ported your releases to the last, hottest OS to keep up with your outreach? Not only does Software Inc house a STUPIDLY complex amount of interconnected systems, but while playing through it, the rest of the industry will march on as well, with companies rising and falling and giving way to new ones. This really does give the player a massive amount of freedom on how they want to steer their company through the game, and letting them specialize in any path they fancy. And believe me, it does not even stop there, I haven't even mentioned managing your staff, organizing them into purpose-built teams, handling post-release support, hell, PRINTING your software and--
"okay, okay, OKAY dude!" I hear you desperately yelling at me for the past two paragraphs. "Alright! OKAY! ...Isn't this like, a little too much?" Well, it is and it isn't. For the absolute insanity of complexity that goes into Software Inc, most of the layers to it will unfold progressively as the field advances through the years, and if you don't do something, you can always find someone else to do it for you, so the player can simply focus on creating and maintaining their software and at its core, SI will just be a notch or two more complex than MGT. And honestly, once you start reaching the point of extending to these other fields, it's done more for fun than necessity. And this is because Software Inc becomes really, really, REALLY easy.
At the start of the game you will usually take a few contract jobs, then develop a couple of software tools, then start self publishing, and once you reach a certain critical mass of staff and market, the game is kinda hard to mess up as long as you can run your company semi competently. Even in the rare case of a competitor launching software that absolutely (immediately, unrecoverably) causes all your current users to bail from your product, it's easy to keep your company in the black by taking contract work, outsourcing your customer support, taking loans, and your company will just make more money, and grow, and hire more teams, and make more money, and it's just... kinda boring at the end of the day, really.
At that point the game will just pivot to managing your staff and your teams, increasing your office space (by probably just cloning an office into another office) and enjoying the ride. This is not helped by the fact that, by design, every playthrough will start with the same technologies, and will follow largely the same path, and for all the incredibly complex background simulation, it will be more of a thing that just... happens than something you want to stay on top of. You will never need to check how your rivals are doing, or take advantage of a competitor's layoffs. You can, but will never need to undermine another company. You'll just develop your software, milk it for all its worth, and move on. You'll scale up 'cause you don't know what to do with your money, and not to stay competitive.
The scope of the game doesn't increase as your company grows, so it ends up feeling really bloated and micro-y by the latter stages. There are some automation options, which is neat, but it just highlights how your progression will kind of go on autopilot for most of a playthrough as you stare at line go up. I get what the game wants to go for, but its UI, tools, graphs and scope will always feel like the small company you started with, just... bigger. Like if in Spore you still were controlling individual creatures by the time you become an intergalactic spanning empire, and your Sony-scale megacorp will go into a crisis due to everyone being sad about their friend being laid off.
Is Software Inc worth it? It's certainly an enjoyable experience and worth going through just for the sheer depth of its complexity, but in a "staring at a fully realized city in Cities Skylines" kind of way. It's ultimately a pretty easy game that is more of a feature showcase and less a game about the satisfaction of putting a company together, and while it certainly feels like it could be more fun to play, it is a step in *mostly* the right direction for this kind of management game.
7/10.