gamegrene.com

Formed through what Anarchy Enterprises likes to call an 'open game development', Deep Sea Tycoon, their latest offering, claims to have benefited from the input of various beta testers and so provides 'far more freedom than the average tycoon game'. Having downloaded the demo of this game I can safely say that freedom is not everything.

The camera may seem fairly unrestricted, yet the method of rotation and the sensitivity of zooming only draw attention to a rather clumsy interface. Unlike the Rollercoaster Tycoon games, Anarchy draws comparison to the people moving through your underwater city as just graphics, you cannot discover moods or needs other than a generic list of comments, and table of sea-life and people-happiness. In other tycoon games I found it fun to control the people, move them to other places and discover their needs, or just try to drown or bury them! This is sadly lacking in Deep Sea Tycoon; the boasted 25 characters you can pick for a persona come nowhere near to making up for this.

I couldn't help but be deterred by the 'user friendly' interface, with it's childishly large colourful buttons that make irritating zing sounds whenever you press something. The buildings relating to animals are quite good for creating the odd dolphin or turtle but there seems to be no true interaction of sea-life with people, or even with each other. After creating about ten of each creature, as is possible in the demo, I found myself with three little clouds of whales, dolphin and turtles, endlessly circling around their own buildings, with an occasional scuba diver chasing after a dolphin or two.

Whilst you can aid your Atlantean sea-horse defenders by jumping into a military building, the promised RTS gameplay is more than a little slow. The sight on your torpedoes is so huge that it seems impossible to be accurate, and anything hit evaporates softly, instead of a more satisfying explosion. The appeal of a tycoon game to me has been the power over the community, the variety of structures and the power to mould a city to your own thoughts. Now, in Deep Sea Tycoon you can choose to pollute and go for money, make the city beautiful or have a healthy mix of the two, but you cannot influence the people, the buildings cannot be personalised, and there are none of the little additions that make a game worth while. Playing the game just made me think of what it could be, for it's certainly a good idea for a tycoon game, but where are the upgrades that made Age of Empires so fun to play? The game could be vastly improved just by allowing you some impact in the training of these Atlantean Defenders, with some power over buying their armour, or the ability to trade with other communities for more than just the rather limiting Oil, Pearl, Gold and Gems.

I found the demo offered so little options for creating a city that it casts doubt over the full game, even with the promised 90 plus buildings and 30 odd scenarios. The true 3D-environment offers nothing new in the way of graphics, and the sea-life cannot be researched or aided. You cannot hire people to work in your buildings or engage your city on a level any way comparable to the landscape moulding of the other tycoons. The demo only evokes ideas of what this game could have been, for the lack of variety in it suggests those creating it have never actually sat down and played it themselves! Perhaps in this open game development that allows more user input Anarchy has tried to cater to far too many tastes and have left the options all rather vague, instead of concentrating on expanding some areas of the game. It is hard to classify this as a tycoon game, as for me a tycoon game needs far more involvement with the people and buildings. Even the demos of other tycoon games offer a better insight into gameplay than this, for the idea of controlling a city and populace usually means far more engagement than the abject demo I have played. Either Anarchy Enterprises has made a demo that does little justice to the full game or this routinely dull gameplay is really all there is.