Software Inc Impressions:
Lets get the bottom line out of the way first, so you know how my impressions are generally meant to be read: Its a very promising Early Access game, with some rather annoying design/accessibility issues. Going by the stream of updates, planned content and feedback from the dev, I recommend jumping in if you arent allergic to Early Access games.
Gameplay:
There is quite a bit more depth to it than I imagined, partly due to the core mechanic (comparable to Game Dev Story) and mostly due to the plethora of other features that this simulation game entails. It is not only a game about levelling up your characters and pushing out software (Game Dev Story), but also focusses on aspects like stock market, software that is dependent on each other, an economy affected by the companies and software output, managing employer needs, managing time schedules, planning team structures for different parts of a project and so on and so forth. I am going to describe the basic gameplay formula now, but just so you know that there is quite a bit more to it once you start dipping more into it.
The basic gameplay idea consists around individual "workers" that have a subset of skills & needs, who are in charge of creating software, which you in turn sell to make profit. Easy (not 100% correct) example: You start with one guy, say he is good in system programming, but shitty at art, so you start with contract work on a few projects that dont require art skills, all the while making sure that the office isnt drowning in dirt and that he has his needs fulfilled (food, toilet, light), since otherwise his productivity will decrease.
That is only the easiest early game start though that doesnt even consider most of the aspects that make this game as appealing as it is. More intricate projects will need a bigger variety of skills, as you likely wont make a good audio program without someone specialized in Audio programming/coding. Another aspect the game is VERY good at, is mimicking an increasing need for structures with an increasing company size, which is at the same time highly satisfying for the player, as you start seeing more challenges and options as time goes along instead of needing to learn everything from day 1. For example, in the first few months of the game, you will likely only have one employer (yourself), which means you dont even need to care much about salaries, compatibility with other workers, vacation, parking spots, noise in the work environment, etcetc.
Issues:
I have a few issues with how the game is presenting itself though. The tutorial boxes and ingame help is very half baked and the game utterly fails at informing the player about certain game aspects and their importance or impact. Want to know how much a worker will approximately improve in a 3 month long educational seminar? Tough luck. The game didnt tell you that putting points into the leader skills for your own character is completely pointless? Well bad on your for wanting to be the "leader" of your projects right away! Trying to negotiate a bit with your employees on salaries only to notice that it will decrease their productivity by 50% for AGES? Bad you.
I am also missing a lot of contextual info, some information is presented in ever increasingly long boxes, which are very hard to read and compare because they require to scroll vertically and horizontally (instead of having a UI element that would allow viewing all info at once). Considering how much info the game has, there are also not enough info windows accessible and even less that contain the info exactly in the right way you'd need it. This game basically needs a Europa Universalis style ledger to sort for every info imaginable. The game has a very basic list based UI (think excel sheets), instead of more complex UI elements with charts/graphical elements and extensive hover infos.
Also, despite allowing the player to manage very miniscule aspects (which I very much appreciate), like how items are placed (which can have a huge impact) or which rooms are reserved for which team (for example, I have an extra room set aside for my marketing team), the game still currently doesnt go far enough. I can set rooms to certain teams, but I cant restrict a room to a single employee or a single part of a specific team. This becomes annoying when you have an employee who basically cant work with anyone else around her making noise for example. Also, while those aspects are pretty neat in itself, the player feedback is very much lacking. A worker will tell you that she hates the noise, but what is making the noise? A worker is unhappy about the lacking decoration in the office, but after putting down tons of plants and images, the worker still is unhappy and the game doesnt tell you why (for a very arbitrary reason, the worker seems to need a few months until she starts appreciating the decoration). Or what do you need water for? You can check the rooms for water ability, but nobody actually seems to need water.
All that makes the game very difficult to outright "enjoy", since you are required to learn what the game doesnt do yet. My first 2-3 hour session was for example completely shafted by me assuming two things (which I dont consider all too unreasonable): My main character should be the leader and I should be doing some contract work before educating myself. Wrong, ignore leadership and educate your main character in all things first (which is a bit of a design flaw and feels like abusing a gameplay mechanic btw), since otherwise you'll not be able to finish projects quickly enough to expand your company anytime soon.
What I am also missing a bit, is the differentiation between software that is similar on the outside. If I create Audio Maker 1, with outstanding quality, creating Audio Maker 2 could have the exact same features and still would sell great despite not differentiating. Shouldnt having the exact same features somewhat affect sales since the software is too similar? This might lead to less software developed though, which goes a bit against the nature of the game. Maybe having more smaller sets of features could solve this.
Another minor quibble, the newspaper articles needs more flavour text to make every release actually feel important, and it needs more buildable content. More office machines, decoration etc.
Current Content:
What I played so far was very enjoyable in itself. You have SIMS style house building, SIMS style needs for your workers (compatibility with other workers, light, toilet, food, space, decoration, salaries.. [note to myself, preferred working times would be cool as a need]), projects that need different sets of skills (Audio, Networking, System, 2D, 3D graphics, programming, designing..), jobs that are completely unrelated to programming and which will add more gameplay options or help you streamlining tedious tasks (receptionists, marketers, leaders, maintenance/cleaning/IT guys..), can divide employees into teams, complete with their own working environments, sub tasks and shift times, need to be aware of other companies' developments (challenging a very good and popular software might be a lot less profitable than challenging a low quality market leader of a different product category), all the while keeping dependencies in mind. Actually, since I love that aspect, lets quickly talk about dependencies and how that effects the economy:
Any program you are creating, you create for a certain (or multiple) OS. The features of the OS dictate which features your programs can use (if the OS doesnt have audio features, you obviously cant use them in your program either). That could lead to you deciding on an outdated OS, which still most of the population is using, despite that leading to you making objectively inferior products. That is a highly interesting dynamic, since the software output does also affect the popularity of the OS, meaning in my current game an older OS version is still relevant because I kept pushing content for it, despite already having 2 newer versions out.
And that doesnt even cover a lot of the features that I havent even touched yet, like parking spots, stock market, buying/selling IPs, leadership skills and whatnot.
Updates & Future Content:
The game seems to get a very good amount of regular content updates (every 2-4 weeks), which makes this a very promising project to support and play in Early Access. You can find the list of features to be included next or the ones having high/medium priority here:
https://trello.com/b/9I286Mhu/software-inc and here is a changelog of the last big change 2 weeks ago:
- PARTIALLY implemented company deals (Still WIP)
- Added reception desk, receptionists and guests
- Completely overhauled stock system! Each company now has X stocks worth Y, the first stock is always owned by the company and worth whatever was in the bank account at launch (Still WIP)
- OS popularity now depends on the software released for it, increasingly as time goes on
- Fixed actor timer not going down fast enough on 3x speed causing a lot of complaints
- Completely overhauled how often simulated companies are created and how often they release new software, meaning ALL MODS WILL BREAK (Example here: http://coredumping.com/random/Games.xml )
- Employees can now cut across diagonally when inside rooms
- Added connect servers option in right click menu to connect all selected servers
- Secondary blue highlighting, currently to highlight connected servers and assigned furniture/rooms
- Autodev quality should depend on average applicable skill for work instead of leader skill
- Added electricity, water and maintenance data overlay
- Data overlay now affects employees skin in satisfaction/effectiveness mode
- Made outstanding quality possible
- Bugs now give bad rep continually
- Added reputation barchart toggle in product detail window
- Innovation now controls sales falloff over time, instead of just being a direct multiplier
- Reputation stars will be red if decreasing
- AI companies should plan releases ahead of time instead of just releasing them, this will enable a lot of cool stuff in the future, like planning ahead for the player
- Sales are now multiplied by actual quality so bad releases don't get sales simply because there is no competition
- Contract deadline is now visible in beta phase
- Flatscreen TV now unlocks in 1995
- Added ability to change color for lamps and holo computer
- Double click column resize button to make fit contents
- SCM server requirements have been reduced to counter balance changes in devtime during alpha 4
- Removed turning animation and fixed pathing speed problem for speeds above 1x
- Leaders shouldn’t handle themselves in HR, that is the player’s job
- Remove screen tint when in color mode and or changing graphic settings
- Ignore staff in data overlay mode
- Added cool color filter to data overlay mode
- Time should keep skipping after wage negotiation
- Border in wire mode
- Fixed employees wlking through skyscrapers
- Add warning if company name hasn’t been changed when starting a new game
- ESC to exit new game screen
- Fixed light shining through floor in some cases with more shadows enabled
