Cartel Tycoon - Rule the Drug Trade
Become a Drug Lord, Control an Empire
Live like a King...Pin
Bring your guns and get ready to sling some drugs in the latest Early Access title by Moon Moose and tinyBuild! Cartel Tycoon brings the thrill to you in a logistics-based criminal empire. Traffick all sorts of drugs, lean on locals, and take control of entire areas to expand your ultimate drug empire.
Unbridled Power and Corruption
If you've ever wanted a chance at laundering money, running drugs, and dealing with all of the paperwork that includes, then Cartel Tycoon might be the game for you. The core of this title is resource management through logistics. Take control of the supply line and create an entire economic system based on your drug lord's wants or needs.
It's a solid concept, one that busts down the door and lets you know it's here front and center.
Fans of city-buildersimulations and resource management games with a criminal twist should note. Even in Early Access, Cartel Tycoon comes swinging with its 4/5 direct concept.
Concept Rating: 4/5
Classic City Sim Vibes
Everything about Cartel Tycoon screams resource management. The workshops and factories are all ergonomically shaped, maximized from the get so you can grow, then sell more drugs.
Keep tabs on things like farm efficiency, black market prices, and logistics safely from your fortified compound.
Some things still need work, like warehouses' logistics and the overlays of empire expansion. The biggest factor is currently, there is no way to control which workshops (where your drugs are processed) feed into warehouses. It's admittedly a pretty big issue in a game all about logistics.
Since Cartel Tycoon is still in Early Access, though, the developers are always updating based on player feedback. The graphics and audio have some kinks left to work out, making them average at 3/5.
Graphics & Audio Rating: 3/5
You Gotta Love the Grind
Cartel Tycoon is a game that heavily relies on logistics. Building and managing all the different types of farms while also monitoring your contacts in the underworld, like your money laundering businesses or distributors, takes a certain love of organization.
There are several types of gameplay planned, but currently, you choose to play either story mode or sandbox mode.
City builder simulation fans, this game will speak to you. It's all the ridiculousness of running a drug empire, like constantly bribing or threatening authorities. Death comes for all cartel leaders, but build your army well. Choose lieutenants, soldiers, and other members of your cartel. Reward loyalty while punishing betrayal in whatever ways you see fit, all while amassing your wealth and power for as long as possible.
Choose from only a small selection of cartel lords. Maintain the thinly veiled appearance of a legitimate business by growing plenty of legal goods alongside your illegal product. Balance the logistics of running a huge empire, including demanding employees and nosy authorities.
Complete different tasks as they arise in story mode, including brief tutorials on starting in the drug game. Alternatively, get right to the grind in the sandbox. Both, however, suffer from an early difficulty in gameplay balance. It's frustrating enough that it affects general gameplay, bringing the enjoyability down to a 3.5/5.
Gameplay Rating: 3.5/5
Early Access Title Well on Its Way
Seeing an active Discord when a game is in Early Access can be either great or terrible. Developers have the chance to take feedback and polish their work into something for an eager community. Cartel Tycoon has all of these pieces.
All in all, it's a new twist on an old classic genre with plenty of potential. It's up to tinyBuild now to tweak the biggest community complaints, which are logistics control and gameplay balance, to make Cartel Tycoon a resource management gem.
TL;DR
Manage a drug empire as a true kingpin, watching your back and your front, in Cartel Tycoon.
