Tech Corp. is new management-based Early Access title that lets you step into the world of the tech industry. Developed by Mardonpol Inc. and published by 2tainment GmbH, you start out with a low-level tech company and set out to make it the biggest tech company the world has ever seen. Your main goal is to be the next big shot while hopefully avoiding bankruptcy in the process.

START SMALL OR GO BIG

When first starting out, you can pick between three modes. Since challenge mode is locked at this point in development, you’re left with either standard mode or sandbox mode. Standard mode is pretty straightforward: You’re essentially completing a tutorial through the objectives that the game gives you. You start with a low-level tech company and build your way up through the objectives given. This mode is nice to get acquainted with the controls and mechanics; however, it does suffer from quite a few bugs. 

For example, while working on the objective for creating software add-ons, I decided to release a new product. This action somehow reset my tutorial back several objectives. No big deal. I redid the objectives up to that point and finally completed the software add-on objective, which then caused the tutorial to loop again. I redid the objectives (again) and the tutorial reset (again), leaving me no way to progress past the software add-on section. Though bugs are to be expected in Early Access, being unable to progress through entire portions of the game is a pretty serious issue.

If you want to bypass all of the objectives and go straight for the glory of making complex products, you can hop into sandbox mode. With limitless money, you can make any product your heart desires and get familiar with all of the advanced features you might not see for a while in standard mode. Though this mode is a fun way to build a big company fast, it is not without bugs either. A few times, I had objectives from standard mode somehow pop up in sandbox mode, as well as some issues with the in-game hotkeys activating when attempting to name products.

DESIGN YOUR COMPANY

In either mode you choose, you’ll get to design your company and all of the tech products that it produces. Though you can’t design much in your actual office apart from color scheme and layout, there is an impressive amount of customization in the products themselves. You can research and unlock next generation features, develop add-on software like video calling, pick out color schemes, and determine how you want your products marketed. Developing video games takes the product customization a step further and allows you to hand-pick everything from the art style, to the type of story, to the campaign length, to the cover design of each game you produce. The customization options are extensive, and are easily one of the most enjoyable aspects of this title.

MICROMANAGE 

As wonderful as the many ways to customize products are, they do come with quite a bit of grinding and micromanagement. You can automate some things, such as hiring a manager to issue breaks to your programmers or setting your factory to auto buy supplies, but there is still a lot left to manage. You have to keep an eye on how many components your programmers make, what your researcher is researching, what your engineer is making, what is needed to unlock new product features, what is being produced in the factory, and a myriad of other things. Certain add-ons and software also take quite a bit of grinding from your programmers to gather up enough components to be able to develop anything, which involves some waiting around if that’s all you need to do. The grinding and micromanaging can end up being somewhat addicting, especially if you like that style of gameplay, but otherwise you might find the emphasis on micromanagement to become tedious after a while.