Publisher Tycoon Demo

Although the focus has shifted toward ebooks in the last few years, printed media is still a pretty big business, mainly because people like to own physical copies of the books they love. Naturally, the sales are not as big as they could be, given the fact that more and more people prefer to use Kindles and carry an entire library with them wherever they go.

Publisher Tycoon is a sim game in which you play the role of a girl working for a publishing company, who somehow has the liberty to choose what and how to publish. Not only that, but she is also in charge of every process the books have to go through, which is pretty unusual for a publishing company. The game itself is in a very rough state as well, especially when it comes to the interface and the writing.

You start with a pretty small amount of cash to your name, which must be used to publish your first book. The subject of the book is left up to you, although the choices are not exactly exciting, given the fact that you have to focus on topics like accounting or marketing. After that, you also have to worry about editing, proofreading and a few other things that affect the quality of the finished product.

The game lets you play for 18 months, and you have to make $20 million to complete the story. On the other hand, it’s also possible to continue playing after that if you complete the objective, although no new mechanics make an appearance after that. The already existing mechanics are not too engaging either, since they are rather rough and repetitive.

The interface is a bit too simple as well, given the fact that it’s mostly text slapped onto colorful boxes, with barely any kind of formatting or taste. Speaking of which, the grammar in the game is poor to say the least, since there are many spelling mistakes and clear signs that the developers are not native English speakers. However, this part could have been ignored if the gameplay were a bit less repetitive.

In the end, Publisher Tycoon can actually be a very addictive game with the right selection of gameplay mechanics and less spelling mistakes, which are quite ironic in a game about books. Thus, there’s still potential here, but a lot more work is needed for it to actually reach the players.