I must admit I’m a big than of tycoon games, whether that be Theme Hospital, Rollercoaster Tycoon or OpenTTD. But sometimes, you come over some really insane ones.

Hospital tycoons

Hospital tycoons are a bit of a silly idea in countries like the UK where our hospitals are public. Games like Theme Hospital
are purposely silly and that’s what makes them fun, but some games like Hospital Tycoon try to be funny but fail… badly. Amazon reviews on Hospital Tycoon comment that too much of your time is spent preventing staff starting romance and treating the extremely limited number of diseases.

School tycoon?

Whilst many schools are either private or privately-run, I really fail to see how one could run a school as a business!

School Tycoon rips this presumption to pieces! Your school starts out as a single, portable classroom and expands into a school with bigger classrooms, which come in three sizes for 10 different subjects, and you can even add sporting facilities, vending machines and fast food restaurants (Jamie Oliver hasn’t reached the States yet, evidently!), detention rooms and if you really feel like it a rollercoaster!

The game actually has very good reviews on Amazon, averaging 4.7/5!

Prison Tycoon

Prison Tycoon is a game which amazingly has 3 sequels (such as Prison Tycoon 3) where you are put in charge of a private prison. You must ensure prisoners behave, that staff are happy and that you’re making a profit.

In the sequels, you must also ensure your staff aren’t taking bribes, deal with famous prisoners and design your own jails.

Initially, you start off in a minimum security prison before working your way up to a Super Max!

The games actually sound interesting and aren’t exactly expensive, but I do wonder how playable they are!

Oil Tycoon
Oil Tycoon sees you run an oil company in ‘17 historical and modern scenarios’, ‘50 animated historical events such as World War 1 and 2′ in ‘10 major cities’ with ’superb graphics’ in a ‘realtime, realistic share market’!

Fascinating, eh? George Bush better watch out!

Beer Tycoon

Running a brewery probably sounds fun, but according to reviews of Beer Tycoon
on Amazon, you’re better off to ‘buy some paint instead’ despite the wonderfully interesting features of the game like the ‘50 ingredients one can brew the beer from, including various kinds of hops and malts’.

I better go buy some paint to watch dry!

Want more? Go enjoy Ice Cream Tycoon Deluxe, Caterpillar Construction Tycoon, Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon and if you feel a little ‘Murdochian’ you could try Tabloid Tycoon. Yes, they’re real games!

MyNevermind is a nice freeware game for OS X I have been using to kill time lately.

The game is very similar to the 1970 boardgame Mastermind but it is slightly harder because instead of having 6 colours, you have 10 numbers and the game is single player. Basically, the aim of the game is to find a 4 digit number in less then 10 turns!

To help you find these digits, you would be told whether a digit is correct, but in the wrong place, or whether it is in the right place. You will not, however, be told which digit is correct and you have to deduce this yourself.

The game is timed, for purposes of score calculation, but there is no time limit. I generally spend about 5 minutes to play the game, but depending on your skills of deduction, this may be much longer or much quicker!

The game is not the most attractive application, but it is fit for purpose and still exercises your brain!

If you have a Mac, you might as well download it and at least give it a try. It’s only 308Kb big!

I was reading Rev2’s (belated) Blog Action Day feature and discovered it was about a game called ElectroCity where you are tasked with providing a city with necessary power and features such amusement parks and the amount and manner in which you do it determines how well you and your city do.

You are given with 150 turns to build the biggest, most-environmentally friendly town possible. You are then given a score out of one hundred and a grade (such as B+) as the game seems to be orientated towards New Zealand schools. For your score, factors such as popularity amongst your citizens, environment, energy management and money are counted.

You are initially given a town of 10,000 and $400 to use. With this $400, you can elect to build the likes of wind turbines or become the PRC and use coal power stations! You can also have initiatives in your town such as awareness, a blackout, getting all citizens to use energy-efficient lightbulbs or install solar panels… naturally these also cost money. You can raise extra money through tax (the rate of which you set) but if you set your tax too high, people will leave your town.

Mines and gas wells can also be built and the extracted fossil fuels can either be sold (to raise extra money) or used in power stations (the latter results in pollution which must be offsetted through building forests etc. as you must be somewhat conservative with the little land you have to build on).

The game is Flash based and reminds me somewhat of a ‘tycoon’ game and being a massive fan of OpenTTD and soforth it nearly immediately addicted me. The game’s sponsored by New Zealand’s Genesis Energy and prizes worth up to $10,000 were awarded to participating schools.

My current high score on the game is 87 (which is an A-… due to my town’s low population )… what’s yours?

Tags: electrocity, global warming, climate change, game, web 2.0, web2, web 2, web2.0, new zealand