Drill Deal – Oil Tycoon is a strategy simulation game published by Ultimate Games. You manage a small oil drilling business and grow it as big as possible. The goal is to keep your employees happy and safe, generate profits, build a good reputation and ultimately manage your oil rig successfully. But does this title stand out from other business moguls?
The game starts with an interactive tutorial, which I appreciated. Some business management games have lots of moving pieces, jobs to juggle, and buttons to learn. Drill Deals – Oil barons are no exception. We don’t build oil rigs and just sit back and watch the money pour in. No, this game really brings “management” to “management”.
In “Drill Deal – Oil Tycoon” you have to build an oil rig from scratch. Of course, you’ll need employees to manage your oil rigs and fix broken ones. But employees need to be happy, healthy and safe. Therefore, you will also need to build kitchens, bedrooms, etc. I felt that keeping the employees happy was the hardest part. They don’t like working in noisy places, but they work on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. Noisy by default. Each building you place creates some amount of noise, so placing bedrooms near it, for example, will annoy your employees. So they don’t work well.
There are eight missions to complete, each of increasing complexity. For example, one of your missions is to successfully build an oil rig in pirate waters. Yes, beware of pirates, krakens and weather issues. To be honest, I didn’t feel these issues were serious enough to keep employees happy and on the job. He had to redo the first mission four times because all the employees had retired. At that point, the game was more frustrating than fun.
The controls are nothing like a walk in the park either. The game’s interface is within his one circular menu with submenus that you need to navigate. Even after playing the tutorial, there were so many buildings and other items to build that I struggled to remember where everything was. Luckily, the game’s speed can be changed, so I was able to pause the oil rig while I scrolled through the vast menus to find what I needed. But then I realized I didn’t have the resources or materials to build what I needed. I always felt like I was one step behind where the game wanted me to be.
Plus, even if you can build something, it can be difficult to put it on an oil rig. The cameras aren’t very good, so it can be difficult to see exactly where you’re placing new buildings depending on how many other buildings you have on your rig. Of course, you need money to build new buildings. As with most business simulation games, this can be difficult early on. It takes money to make money, but it doesn’t cost much to start the game.
The missions in “Drill Deal – Oil Tycoon” are not necessarily difficult. I mostly found myself navigating gameplay, managing my workforce, and making sure I had enough money to do the hardest parts. For example, each mission has three parts. Completing 2 of the 3 parts will unlock the next mission. I found this annoying as I often felt stuck. I didn’t want to feel stuck in the game of business management. I want to feel rich. There is a sandbox mode which made it even more fun. However, if you’ve been struggling with navigating buttons and navigating the game for a while, the sandbox isn’t all that great because it lacks direction. It felt like there was no happy medium in this game.
At first, “Drill Deal – Oil Tycoon” was fun. But the more I played, the more frustrated I became. It wasn’t as intuitive as I expected. Like any tycoon game, I wanted my main mission to be rich and successful. I wasn’t interested in other assignments, but the only reward I got was building a brand new oil rig from scratch. If you love business sims and are looking for a challenge, this game might be for you. But for my part, I think I’ll stick with the other big games.
