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Project Highrise is a 2D tower-building simulation game by Kasedo Games. It was released nearly 5 years ago, but I still find myself coming back to this glorious sim time and time again. The aim of the game is to keep your tower inhabitants happy, whether they are offices, shops, apartments, restaurants or even hotels! The game has a couple of gameplay modes, you can work on building your own tower, or you can take on one of a number of scenarios. The scenarios vary in difficulty from easy to hard and to unlock some of them you will need to have completed a particular scenario. This gives a type of story progression, which I think is awesome. There are many things that you have to worry about when keeping tenants happy. Most of the units you can build, i.e. apartments have certain wants, some that need to be fulfilled, like electricity, water, phone, cable TV. Some have preferences such as prefers to be on upper floors or does not like noise or smells. You will also have to deal with the refuse from your towers. You’ll start any level, whether your own tower or a scenario tower with a screen that looks a bit like this. You have a construction office, with two workers, an electrical transformer and a wiring cupboard. Before a tenant moves in, you will need to make sure that they have everything

By The Simming Spoonie

they need, electricity, water, phone and lines, and cable TV are provided by building their relevant transformer, switchboard, transceivers, meters and manifolds. All of these services have to built in the underground section of your tower. Each unit will need to be wired, or plumbed in as well, using handily colour coordinated wires and pipes. Not only do tenants require these basic utilities, they also require all sorts of other services, offices need business support such as couriers, copy services, bottled water. As your type of tenant improves in quality, so will their service needs, high-end firms will need helicopter charters and limousine services! The same can be said of apartments, services start off with handymen and laundromats, and as tenants become wealthier they start to demand yoga services and wealth advisers. When it comes to shops, they start off needing nothing more than a storage bay, but luxury two-storey stores demand services like wine tasting and knife demo booths. All of these services cost money to upkeep, but the rent you can expect to make from the higher-end renters can make it a sound investment. Managing your expenses and income is relatively simple using ADA your dotmatrix printout. I think ADA is a really intuitive way to do so. As you can see here, she provides a number of views to help you manage your tower, she can also tell you what services are struggling to keep up with demand, population feedback, such as “I wish I could get a cup of coffee” help you to decide which type of unit to invest in next. Ada will also tell you 69

earned through increasing your tower’s population, from buying artwork, having happy tenants and also from completing special contracts. These contracts are a great way to create investment money, but you can only have two active at any one time, so be careful which ones you end up choosing, as some may be impossible to fulfil given your current rating.

the number of utilities you have spare. As you start wishing to higher rent-paying tenants for your units, there is another metric you will need to pay attention to, and that is prestige. Higher levels of prestige attract high-end tenants and open up growth opportunities. Prestige can be Another interesting metric Project Highrise employs is “Media Buzz”. Buzz is earned from people visiting your Restaurants and Cafes and your Retail Stores. When you have a certain amount of buzz, you can spend it on Media Campaigns. These media campaigns can be incredibly helpful, you can, for example, spend it on the “It’s a Steel” campaign. This allows you to build floors more cheaply, it gives a 50% reduction on construction costs for new floor tiles, elevators, stairwells and utility closets. As you can imagine, this is incredibly beneficial when you are looking to expand your tower. You will need to be careful about when you employ these, as each time you activate a campaign, it increases the cost of the next campaign. The last metric I will discuss in this review is influence. Influence comes from your apartment residents and select offices, it allows you

to place consultants offices, which make certain upgrades available, such as improving the amount of traffic that comes from public transit, allowing you to automate the renovation of your units, increase the height limit on your tower and increase the number of tiles you are allowed to use. Placement of your units, wiring closets and services is incredibly important to create an aesthetic tower block, this is made maddeningly difficult as each type of unit has its own set size. This can make you wish you had placed your new office one tile to the right, to allow for a door to block out noise. Units can be moved, with the addition of a movers office, but they have to move to an area of entirely clear floor space. In addition, each floor requires its own plumbing and wiring closet, I have made the mistake of forgetting these on occasion and chaos ensued as I tried to find a way to make them fit. Project Highrise’s aesthetic is gorgeously simple, yes, it would have been nice to have been able to change the decor in some of the apartments so that they weren’t all orange, but overall it’s this simplicity that keeps my attention so focused. The music is surprisingly addictive, I often find myself humming the “elevator” style tunes long after I have exited the game. If you are looking for a well crafted, intuitive management sim, you won’t go wrong with Project Highrise. Project Highrise is available on Steam. Developed by SomaSim and published by Kasedo Games.

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