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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Road to Riches
Road to Riches is a large, 40MB download that is a business simulation.You're John, a loyal and hard-working trucking employee who is let go ("retrenched") by a boss only interested in lining his pockets. Through your friends' and families' encouragement, you start your own trucking business.
You start with one truck that is leased. The goal of the game is to take orders, indicated by an orange dot on a purple background. The truck drives to the dot and see what the order is (what's the load, how heavy is it, the delivery due time, and where it must be delivered). The player must make decisions and only choose deliveries that can be made within the timeframe, as late deliveries only pay half, and deliveries after 6 pm (18:00) are free.
At the end of the day, the game takes you to a balance sheet where you see revenue (what you earned) and then the costs associated with the business, including "fixed costs", gas (petrol), vehicle maintenance and depreciation, and a "mishap". A reputation bar is displayed on the screen. Reputation is built by delivering jobs on time. You can also choose different ways of advertising through the business tab. Both a good reputation and advertising work to bring in more orders. As the game progresses, you can both purchase additional trucks and drivers. (You can also "retrench" them for some karmic balance.)
Pick-ups and deliveries can be moved around as it makes destination sense through manipulation of the 'i' button from the main screen. Multiple trucks/drivers and managing the routes well will increase the profit margin.
You also have a pager that will buzz with additional immediate jobs, if you answer in 10 seconds. Other freelance jobs appear as well. In order to advance, there are objectives to meet, such as earning $5,000 with a positive account balance, or have 5 contracts, or own multiple trucks.
What they did well: it's a good simulation of many of the costs that are involved with trying to get a business off the ground. The story is fun and it is a challenging sim. It's nice to have a fast forward button when the truck is full and is driving around doing deliveries. The pause button is invaluable when trying to organize multiple truck deliveries for efficiency.
What could be better: the graphics. It's a top-down view on the city, and it gets boring to look at. The music is the same jazz-style song played over and over. Since there isn't much need for sound in the game, you might want to use your own soundtrack while you play the game. I found it difficult to determine what the drive time is from one point to another, so I recommend timing it the first few times you go from one location to get a sense of whether you can make the deliveries that you pick up after 4 pm.
Recommended for: fans of sim games.
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