Automation – The Car Company Tycoon Game on Steam

PLEASE, do not simply see my "not recommended" and assume I'm saying this is a bad game.

The concept behind this is absolutely amazing, and I want this game to be finished so badly. The way things are set up (so far) are very easy to learn, and work well. The creation system is basically broken down into a series of many choices, with explanations for the impacts of your choices when the option is moused over. The fluidity of the system thus far only makes me more anxious to play the finished product.

Now, to the point. I do not recommend this game to anyone, as it currently exists. I have been burned quite a few times by early access games, and I usually take a stance of not buying them under any circumstances. My excitement for this concept got the better of me, and I just had to know if it was good.

As of the time of this writing, the tycoon/campaign mode has not been implemented. All you can do is create cars/engines etc. It is entertaining for a little while, but not enough to be worth the price. That is why I don't recommend this. I do recommend that you keep a very close eye on this one, if this concept interests you, and consider buying it when the tycoon mode has been added.

If the devs do this right, this could be an absolutely amazing game. My advice is simply to wait and see how they do with the first major addition to this game.

I will update/change this review as updates are released for the game.

EDIT (23 June 2015): I just hopped on again to test it out since I haven't touched this one in a while, and I still stand by what I said. The bug fixes and improvements made since my review are very apparent. The whole car making process is very smooth, and still fun. It appears the devs are trying to get the creation process completely done before implementing the campaign/tycoon. I regularly check the announcements, and haven't heard them mention anything about that mode coming anytime soon. I find this particularly strange, considering they're in the open beta stage of the game. Why would they consider the game to be in the beta phase when not a single piece of the main game mode has been implemented, or even said to be coming soon? Personally, I think the creation mode is in a good enough state where they could easily get to work on tycoon mode, and throw small bug fixes and content updates here and there. Every time I play this game, I find myself disappointed when I reach the end of the creation process and then have to say "well...I guess that's it." and then go play something else. For me, at least, it feels like a waste of time to make a car, and not be able to do anything with it.

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Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game on Steam