I am a gamer, not a developer. My favorite this year is season 2 of r/MakeTradeScale.

I can play at my pace. It's complex and fun with lots of milestones and level rewards.

In addition to research it has mastery, which allows you to up your production of a single product or component by 10% up to 100% uplevel, then it drops to about 4% for 110 percent increase and higher. I have not counted really, but I am guessing 100 or so products and maybe 14 building types. Approximately 14 research lines and a mastery line for each product.

There's a research line called Nanotech that halves building and research time each level. That's something you want to lean into.

The basic idea is that you build a rocket and go to the moon. I finished that and now it's just a tycoon game, but I still like leveling up.

I played all of Season 1 without spending a penny. For me, Season 2 was so good that I decided to support the developer by going premium, which costs about $5 a month. I could play all of season 2 without paying anything, but I want to support him.

There is another level to the game which is being worked on, but I think it's very complete as it is.

The only thing the game needs is more players of all levels so that the market where you buy and sell good can be more lively. You can always sell whatever you make at base price to the market, but it would be more fun if there were hundreds of players. Some people make money in the market and some sort of ignore it. You can build everything yourself and not really use the market.

There are lots of different ways to play the game.

One more thing. There are daily press conferences which give various buffs. You have one conference yourself then you get up to three buffed periods a day from watching other people's press conferences. Every time someone watches your press conference you get a shorter buffed period. The best buff is 10% cheaper building, but there is also cheaper research, market prices, and faster times too.

So give it a try and let me know what you think.

Hey everyone! My name is Se7enZ. This is my first time posting here, so I hope this is okay! This is an introduction to the game I am currently working on.

I am currently working on a city builder game as my second ever made game. I wanted to show off some of the things currently in the game, such as:

- Buildings. Each building will have its own functions, such as improving your power or providing a place for your programs to work to generate bytes.

- Digital Weather. Currently, there is Rain, Lightning, and Snow. Depending on the weather that occurs, a positive buff and a debuff will occur. Lightning, for example, causes you to take a hit to your Stability (health), but provides constant Power during the storm.

- Morality Questions. Your network administrator (the groovy blue face at the bottom) is trying to understand things. Your private network (city) is retro, and technology is limited. Every so often, it will ask you a question that can provide some stat changes, as well as alter your alignment (color of everything).

- Passive Combat. The game currently has passive combat, where an enemy network will attempt to hack you. You can improve your firewall to help prevent this from happening.

There will be a lot of other stuff later, such as passive abilities based on your alignment and active combat!

I am doing all of the pixel art and currently the music. Additionally, my lead programmer TOMOHAWK is updating my strung-together code to be better (which pleases the network administrator greatly).

I use Aseprite for the art, Strudel.cc for the music, and Godot for the game engine.

No AI will be in this at all. If I can't rig it together, it WILL BE rigged together.

~~~

If this is something you want to see more of, let me know! I am currently looking for initial feedback and suggestions.

I've always loved tycoon games, and I've had an idea for a casino tycoon kind of game, where you manage a casino, and you can play slots, deal on tables etc; So I made one in around about a weekend. I forgot about it for a while until a couple of days ago so I tried to polish it up a bit to the point it was slightly playable because I'd like to see if this is something that people would be interested in.

Ideas I had were around the shady sides of casinos too as well as the more normal sides, like finding big spenders, 'whales' and trying to lure them back into the casino, deals with the mob etc. I feel like because there's a lot of grey area type stuff in that industry there's a lot of potential for a tycoon game out of it.

It's horribly balanced, and there's no art direction to speak of (The basic slot machines are literally arcade cabinets), but I would love it if some of you gave it a try and told me what you think of the concept. Feedback welcome positive or negative :)

You can give it a go here: https://offsiderythme0.itch.io/casino-tycoon-poc

AI was used in this proof of concept, for AI art for one slot machine as well as assistance when writing code.

I really like this group and all the ideas and games that come out of here seem really cool.

I’m looking for a new tycoon game to play and was curious which ones have been your favorites over the past year. A lot of the posts here are about upcoming announcements or games still in testing, so I’m specifically hoping for mature, fully released titles that have already been vetted by the community.

Would anyone be interested in starting a “best of” list in the comments for some of the best games that have come out of this community in the past year?

This post was reviewed by AI for grammar and clarity (Had to make sure I abided by the AI rules) :)

Hello r/tycoon!
I want to share a new trailer for my game with you!

It's a life sim about money, or rather about not having any. You plan one month at a time: what to eat, which job to take, whether to keep studying, how long you can put off the rent. Then the month resolves and the plan quietly becomes the life. Sixty months later you're still driving the taxi you took "just for a while".

Net Worthless comes out on November 16, 2026.

AI disclosure: Event images were created with the help of generative AI. They can be hidden in the settings.

Free demo is already available in Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4878900/Net_Worthless/

I've been working on NoodlePunk, a first-person job/management sim set in a cyberpunk city.

You're enrolled in a corporate-mandated work program and given management of a noodle shop. Customer drones submit orders and in order to satisfy them in a timely manner, you need to manage your ingredient stock, expand and organize your shop, buy licenses for new ingredients, and install upgrades. Efficiency of your operation is key.

The long-term goal is simple: pay off your civic debt and earn your freedom.

At least, that's what you're told.

The game is 99% complete, which feels a little surreal. At this point, I'm mostly fixing bugs and polishing things before release.

NoodlePunk releases on Steam next month!

Here is a small bit of gameplay:

https://youtu.be/Yd9sD--pFDw

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4698050/NoodlePunk/

No Generative AI was used in the making of this game.

https://reddit.com/link/1w1x5pm/video/mrwfe4vdidmh1/player

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4963090/1930_Farm_Manager/

You start with an empty plot, hire workers, assign their tasks, build fields and infrastructure, and gradually create a working production and logistics network.
Workers physically move around the farm, collect tools and resources, transport materials between buildings, harvest crops, store wheat, process it into flour, and carry out the jobs you assign to them directly.
As the farm grows, the management problem becomes less about a single field and more about keeping workers, storage, production and transport working together across multiple properties.

Generative AI was used as a supporting tool during solo development, mainly to find technical information faster, compare possible solutions, check code, organize notes, and explore early ideas. It saves a lot of time that would otherwise be spent searching through browser tabs and documentation. I also use it to help with translations. The game’s design, development decisions, implementation, and final content remain entirely under my control.. The game does not generate AI content during gameplay.

Every aspect of life seems to have its own simulator game now. I get the impression that, over time, this has had a negative impact on the tycoon genre as a niche.

hey r/tycoon, solo dev from austria here. i’ve been working on my game timberline factory for a while now and finally reached a point where i feel it’s worth showing.

i really wanted to move away from the typical everything on a grid style. in this game, logs are actual physics objects. they have weight, they roll, and they collide. if your layout is messy, the logs will just pile up and cause a physical bottleneck. it’s been a nightmare to code and balance, but it feels way more satisfying than a static grid once you get the flow right.

also tried to make the production chain a bit deeper than just cut wood, sell wood. i implemented a waste system where bark goes into your power plant to lower electricity costs and sawdust can be pressed into pellets later in the game for extra cash.

the market prices also aren't just random..i’m using a meanreversion algorithm for the timber index so you actually have to time your sales when the market is up. :)

quick heads up on the ai rule here: i actually got roasted on reddit a while back for using ai placeholders. i listened, ripped everything out and spent the last few weeks rebuilding all assets, screenshots and the UI by hand in unity and gimp. no ai shortcuts anymore, just 100% hand made industrial look.

i'm curious though, do you guys prefer the perfect "grid based" logistics or do you like the challenge of managing a bit of physical chaos in your tycoons?

i'm also currently polishing a demo for the steam next fest in october. if this sounds like your kind of tycoon, i'd really appreciate a wishlist. it helps a ton since i'm doing all this on my own.

steam link: [ https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037170/Timberline_Factory/ ]

would love some honest feedback on the systems!

I released the first version of Startup Empire Tycoon as a pretty rough side project.

The idea was simple: run a startup week by week, make decisions, hire people, raise money, survive market cycles, and eventually end up bankrupt, acquired, or at an IPO.

The first version was heavily vibe-coded and honestly pretty shallow.

Then I kept playing it.

I started finding myself thinking about questions like:

• Is hiring another developer actually worth the burn?
• When should raising a round be better than trying to grow organically?
• How much should a great CTO change your run?
• Should following the current tech hype be a good strategy, or something that eventually blows up in your face?
• How different should two runs feel if the RNG is deterministic?

At that point it stopped feeling like a throwaway project.

I rebuilt a lot of the game around those questions.

Now you manage devs, sales and support, hire CTO/CMO/CFO candidates with different perks, raise Seed through Series B, deal with dilution, compete against rival companies and choose a strategic focus like core product, AI, hardware or hype.

The market itself goes through trends and crashes, so something like going all-in on AI can be incredible for a while and then become painful when the cycle turns.

There are also decision-card events that can create consequences several weeks later.

The part I've probably gone furthest down the rabbit hole on is balancing.

I built a simulator that can automatically play thousands of runs so I can see things like bankruptcy rates, average exit values, dominant strategies and whether certain upgrades or executives are completely broken.

Which, unsurprisingly, they often are.

The funny part is that while I was rebuilding all of this, the update spent almost a month stuck in App Store review, while the old version suddenly started getting more downloads.

So people were discovering the exact version I was desperately trying to replace.

The new version is finally out now.

I'd love feedback from people who actually play tycoon/management games, especially on whether the strategic decisions feel meaningful or if there are systems you'd expect from a startup tycoon that I'm still missing.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/startup-empire-tycoon/id6787488376

AI disclosure: I use AI heavily as a coding and debugging assistant during development. The game design, economy, mechanics, balancing, UX decisions and overall direction are mine.

Hi friends! What do you think?

Shop Crush is a mysterious shop simulator with psychological horror elements, set in the early 2000s.

In this hybrid visual novel, you run a small thrift shop, get to know your customers, figure out what they really want, and decide what to put in front of them. Every customer has their own personality, preferences, and hidden motives - and it’s up to you to figure them out.

Behind each customer is a small psychological mystery waiting to be uncovered. Read their behavior, make the right calls, and balance profit against customer trust as you try to keep the shop running for one more day.

Is there clearly a GOAT 🐐???

No limit to how far back we go!

Let’s discuss…

Our game is called Food Truck Empire, a game about building your own food truck business! You can unlock new recipes, automate production, customize your trucks and compete against rival businesses. 🌭

We've updated our demo, including loads of polishes and improvements based on player feedback. If you'd like to give it a go, you can download on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1872970/Food_Truck_Empire/ 🌮

all feedback is super appreciated and really helps us shape our game, so if you do play, we'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can make Food Truck Empire even better. Thank you! 🍣

P.S: We don't use any form of AI for making our game or marketing it. 🚫

Hi! I'm one of the people from the two-person team that worked on TRADESMAN: Deal to Dealer.

It's a game about building your trading business as you travel from town to town. Buy goods where they're cheap, find profitable places to sell them, expand your caravan, hire companions, upgrade your equipment, complete quests, and take on increasingly dangerous journeys.

The main idea behind the trading system is simple:

The more valuable goods you carry, the stronger the enemies become and the harder the journey gets. So you constantly have to decide how much risk you're willing to take for a bigger profit.

Grow your business, find profitable trade routes, invest in your caravan, and decide how much you're willing to risk on every journey.

After 4.5+ years of development, TRADESMAN has finally reached version 1.0 and left Early Access!

If you're interested, here is the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2555430/TRADESMAN_Deal_to_Dealer/

And of course... No AI was used in the making of this game

Hi community, we updated our demo, specially for the GamesCom event.
We have 6 challenges in our demo available for free, forever. This challenges are logical puzzles, where you need to prepare different chains of production. I think this fits tycoon players well.

If you currently in Cologne at GamesCom, come and visit us for special prize at:
Hall 10.2, Booth F-021g

If you are not able to visit, you are still able to download the demo:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/432120/Age_After_Age/

Waiting for your feeback, and letting you know, in the late September/early October we plan to release sandbox mode, with saves. Note all progress will migrate from demo, to the full game if you will buy it.

Disclaimer: No AI used in Art and Code generation in development of this game.

Aside from gear city (the most realistic car manufacturer tycoon) I also love coffee inc 2 because of its economics & market approach. You can invest in your competitors, buy shares into any market to build your portfolio, buy back your own stock, start other ventures, the marketing is realistic, etc etc

What are tycoon games that you guys feel win in terms of realistic economy and dynamic gameplay?

You build everything in the power plant and grow to power the world. From small PWR up to Magnox and Fusion reactors in the future. Research tech tree and build as you like. Accidents may happen.

I would love to hear what you guys think ( really ) and requests. The game still in development so a lot of things will change.

Release in Steam will be in Q1 2027, link to Wishlist in comment.

No AI was used in the making of this game. Just the steam capsule had some AI but that is not the game itself I believe.