Project Highrise

Seeing this game as a way to relive my Sim Tower glory days I dived in with enthusiasm and for a while it is diverting but frustrating UI and some puzzling design decisions end up sucking the fun out of the experience. There's too much pointless micro management which obliges the player to engage in laborious tasks that don't add to the fun factor but rather highlight poor game design. For example, you build an office - you have to manually count the tiles to try and line things up then you click to place, then you wait for the fit out, then you click the same office to look at getting a tenant in it, then you click the desired tenant, then you click to hook up power, phone and other utilities - all this clicking just to setup a single office. Then do that again a hundred times. And if you forget a step or are distracted by something the tenant will move in and move out again without you even realizing and you are back to square one. Sound design is just OK - also something of a missed opportunity in my view as they could have given the impression of a vibrant tower with a gorgeous soundscape but it's pretty bog standard. The elegant simplicity of Sim Tower just isn't there. It's a shame, because the game has a great visual aesthetic (but even if the visuals are pretty the animations are very bare bones) but I can't recommend you slap down your hard earned cash due to frustrating game-play that gets tedious very quickly.

As much as I tried to like this game and see a Sim Tower successor in it, it's not. Yes, it has a greater variety in offices/appartments/stores and so on, but it lacks the most (if not only) challenging feature from Sim Tower: Elevator-Management. Like stated in other reviews, the UI and Gameplay are full of flaws, and once you unlocked a few of the "higher" rooms, the game gets really boring - if not earlier... I'd wait for a 75%/80%/90% discount...

In this game you build sky-scrapers, and have to manage every aspect of them. For everyone who remembers and loved SimTower; you will feel the right at home with this game! The game has alot of in-depth management, planning and building. Besides of the standard floors and offices (as in SimTower), you now have to connect power-, water-, phone- and gas- lines to keep everyone happy. The next step is decorative artworks, starting contracts with the city and lots and lots more. This game isn't easy! So far I realy enjoying this game! The only buggy thing I encoutered is that navigating/scrolling with the mouse doesnt work, you have to navigate by keyboard; However, pressing left or right somethings keeps "hanging" which keeps the screen scrolling to one direction. However, that is just a small glitch, and I recommand this game to every Sim(Tower) fan out there!

Overall the game is a fairly enjoyable tower building dim, with some nice sandbox elements. It does however have a couple of issues that detract heavily from the charm of the game. The main one, is that if you overbuild and are not providing enough of a particular service such as electric, phone, copy services, etc... the game does NOT tell you in any meaningful way. A little warning icon starts to flash on the offices that don't have a utility, or a box appears on your service room, but there is no overall warning anywhere on the GUI, so if you are not looking at that particular area then the 6 new units you just added probably caused 6 other tenants to leave in a huff. There is no overall rent control that I have found either, It would be nice to be able to adjust the base rent for the whole building instead of having to go room by room to make an increase (or decrease) if so desired. The game is surprisingly entertaining despite it's flaws however, I'm having fun building my towers, but it might be wise to wait to see if it gets patched or until it goes on sale to pick this one up.