What if the inherent fun of city-building games, the challenge of juggling resources and managing the logistics of it, is stripped down to a minimalist form? That’s what Masterplan Tycoon is.
Developed by Bureau Bravin and published by indie label Ravenage Games, Masterplan Tycoon distils the usual presentation of city-builders and resource management games into something that computer programmers and executives would usually see: node diagrams and flow charts.
You have to build farms, forestry, brewer and various buildings, all requiring different resources to be connected to them. There’s various supply chains that can be set up to produce certain products for the fledgling city.
But every building you build is presented as a node in this world made up of rigid grids, and you can connect each node (think of it as roads) with an input and an output. It’s a simple “connect the dots” process that eventually spirals into a web (that strictly moves from left to right) that can pass off as a data flow diagram.
However, the goal of Masterplan Tycoon is not to be punishing. Mistakes won’t be penalised by way of letting you move nodes around at no cost. But connecting nodes around does get more complicated- the connection line only moves left to right, with a very specific arc so you can’t just connect nodes that are in the far right to the left side of the screen.
“Masterplan Tycoon was born from an idea I had: What would happen if I apply resource management mechanics and node systems to a traditional city builder?,” says Anton Bravin, founder of Bureau Bravin.
“I tested this idea at a game jam and a prototype came to life. I decided to continue working on the project alone, and have since fallen in love with it. I hope players find the game’s visual style and simple-yet-intelligent gameplay design just as captivating as I do.”
Masterplan Tycoon has a demo available as part of Steam Next Fest. And it should give you a good 30-minute sampler of how it works.
If you love city builders from a mechanical and gameplay perspective, the stripped-down, minimalist look of the game is a wonderful new perspective to experience a city-builder/resource management/logistics game.
Masterplan Tycoon releases on PC via Steam in Q1 2023.