Rise Of Industry Is A Beautiful But Aimless Sandbox

Rise Of Industry is a beautiful but aimless sandbox.

- Tom Hatfield

The first thing you’ll notice upon playing Rise of Industry is that it’s absolutely gorgeous. The boxy shapes and flat colours of the low-poly style are a perfect fit for the city/factory builder genre. This, combined with bright colours and sticker-like icons, makes the game looks less like a real city and more like a child’s play set. Unfortunately that’s also how the game plays, like a toy. Something that’s fun to play with, but lacks direction.

Rise of Industry is fundamentally about supply and demand. There are a handful of towns of various sizes spread across the map, each of which has two to four stores which will buy a certain good. Your job is to fulfil that demand. This can be as simple as mining some coal and shipping it directly to the hardware store, or as complicated as the pizza, a puzzle of a product that requires mills producing flour, vegetable farms and a dairy producing cheese.

A great deal of thought has gone into refining all of these interactions. Buildings thunk down satisfyingly, trucks chug along adorably and even the menu buttons click pleasingly. Clearly a lot of effort has been put into ensuring that the game feels fundamentally pleasing to play.