Project Highrise by Kasedo games is the developer’s first attempt at the building management genre. While the game does well considering its size, it does fall short on some gloss and finish in the eye-candy department.
Project Highrise
Detailed Review
(-) No place to Zoom?
Project Highrise is a 2d building management simulator. And by 2d I mean really 2d, its flat, there is not a single 3d element in game. But then again I love 2d, so that’s not really a complaint , however the overall resolution of elements and characters in-game is dull and low res. Especially when you zoom in on certain things, upon which they become blurry.
(+) Building a building from the ground up
When you start the game you get 4 difficulty levels – contractor,engineer,architect and developer (I chose dev for obvious reasons) XD. The game plays similar to other games in this genre, you can either start and construct a new building or just start with some pre constructed buildings and progress by developing them further. I went for the latter on my first play-through and the first thing I tried after starting the game was to demolish the skyscraper I was assigned. To which it showed me a pop-out message, that you can’t demolish a property of the city.
You can put in power supplies, telephone lines,electricity lines, then decorate rooms with little 2d paintings and stuff, upgrade,deconstruct ,rent rooms, add tenants ,add consultants. Once all the supplies are in place, you need to keep all the supplies top notch and in stock to make sure tenants are in good mood. You can use the in-game overlays to see whats happening in the building. If you’re still stuck on how to play the game, this game even has some very easy tutorials to teach you the basics.
(-) The Same Old Skyline
There is a music going in loop in background which gets annoying after a while, and makes long hours at the game tenuous. To be honest, I couldn’t really pin point 1 thing this game offers which is genuinely unique and makes a contribution to the genre as whole. Its all *been there done that*.
But that being said, its literally a tiny little game, its a 50mb-100mb download on steam and costs less than Rs550 in India.
Overall, my person rating for this game is a solid 5/10. Its Average at best even if you look at it as a indie title. Without the indie glasses though,its even lower.
