#GEARCITY STARTING OPTIONS MOD#
At the start of the game, your finished vehicles will be missing mod cons like air conditioning, power steering, airbags, folding mirrors, and the like.
The complexity comes from the technology tree. You set up a conveyor system, starting with the manufacture of a chassis, going through stages like body assembly, paint, and electrics, before a quick quality check and an export of the finished car, again, through the “outputs” in the walls of the factory. It’s a reasonably simple concept: you import raw materials from the “inputs” in the walls of your factory. It’s surprising for a simple reason: good UI is something you don’t notice. Apple mastered the “feel-good” interface long ago, and it’s surprising just how much a well-designed and good-looking interface can keep you invested in a game. It leaves things feeling easily understandable and responsive. The graphics engine itself is strictly isometric, and your only options are zoom and pan. Like other offerings from Positech, Production Line oozes class and simplicity, with a polished, clean interface and clearly legible text. Not graphics as in shiny textures and photo-realistic faces (although Mass Effect Andromeda is less uncanny valley and more uncanny sheer cliff), but the interface itself. Your goal is simply to get finished cars to the outputs. Thematically, you’ll be producing and selling cars instead of pharmaceuticals, but it’s the same premise: you have inputs, a large open space in which to manipulate those inputs, and outputs. The similarities to Big Pharma are abundantly clear from the outset.
This is the same developer who brought you Big Pharma, the Democracy series, and Gratuitous Space Battles, although it’s worth noting that Steam lists the developer of Big Pharma as “Twice Circled”. It is being developed by the one-man band, UK developer Cliff Harris, under the banner of Positech Games.
#GEARCITY STARTING OPTIONS SERIES#
Whereas the other two main contenders I’m investigating in this series focus more on the design aspects of the motor industry, such as bore and stroke, number of valves, aspiration, and drivetrain configuration, Production Line is much closer to a (this sounds obvious given the name) production line simulation. Well worth the asking price of £13.99 or your regional equivalent at the current state of development, and updates are regular. It lacks depth, which is something that could well be fixed with further development, but at the moment, it’s hard to see how it will overcome the usual tycoon/management problem: once you have a successful production line and money rolling in, what’s the incentive to continue? It has no requirement that you know anything about vehicles or engines, and it’s a bit too much like a clone of Big Pharma than I’m comfortable with. Where any gaming niche is concerned, there’s going to be a higher concentration of die-hard genre fans, but, unlike city/empire builders, hospital or hotel tycoon games, or American Civil War grand strategy, the car manufacturing tycoon is a bit of a newcomer. See my thoughts on Automation and GearCity for more! Let’s face it: car manufacturing simulation is a bit of a niche. Part one of a three-part series looking into car manufacturing games in Steam Early Access.
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