Tired of simulations with repetitive themes? Discover here three genres that are still too little known to the general public: business, casino or even cooking simulation games.
Business simulation games
This subgenre, also called tycoon, allows you to find yourself in the shoes of a promising businessman. You are tasked with growing your business from the ground up until it is worth millions of dollars. A new game of this genre, Factory Simulation, is currently in preparation. Likewise, here are two games worth exploring.
Big Biz Tycoon
In this business simulation game published in 2002, you control a mega-company, in which you must, for example, hire employees, decorate your company's office building or take care of its equipment. As a company manager, you assign each employee the task they are best suited for based on their stats.
Unlike some games of the same style, if you complete assigned missions in Big Biz Tycoon, nothing prevents you from continuing to replay it freely, instead of necessarily moving on to the next mission.
Mall Tycoon
In this solo business management game also released in 2002, you play more specifically the role of a shopping center manager. You improve the equipment of your center to attract more customers. You manage the tenants of the spaces that make up the various shops to maximize your profits. Just like the previous game, you hire and fire employees at will.
Casino simulation games
Old or very recent casino economic simulation video games deserve to be better known. Thanks to them, you find yourself at the head of casinos with different atmospheres and objectives, like the selection of games that follows.
Casino Inc.
In this game which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, you run your own casino in the 1970s. You evolve in a classy and flashy atmosphere, where everything is yours. This is a real gamble, because you start small with a slot or two. Gradually, you employ more and more staff, until the final stage when people are talking about your establishment from one end of the country to the other.
SimCasino
Sim Casino is much newer: released in 2021, and present on Steam, it is a modern 3D casino simulation game. You build your casino and set the odds for your games yourself. You have the choice between developing a luxury casino or a cheaper solution. The game offers rich, realistic animation and immersive sound. This kind of title is largely inspired by online casinos which have already pushed the simulation to its maximum by offering table games like live blackjack with real croupiers. In a game like James Real Blackjack, players are totally immersed, which gives the feeling of being in a real casino facing the dealer.
Restaurant management games
You take control of restaurants to make them benchmarks in gastronomy through your sense of management, in the same spirit as the Bakery Simulator game from the LMG studio. Here are two examples that should be rediscovered.
Order Up
Released in 2008 by SuperVillain studios, the single player title Order Up is a cooking simulation game, in which you buy and manage several restaurants to try to earn 5 stars for each of them. To do this, you need to complete objectives, by unlocking recipes or by impressing a food critic.
Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game
With Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game released in 2018, you focus on creating the restaurant of your dreams. In addition to being able to customize your chef, you can also create your own recipes!
Unlike other restaurant simulation games, Chef allows you to watch your staff's performance or underperformance. And the more your restaurant grows, the more you can tailor its theme and menu to specific dishes and cuisines. Maybe one day we can hope for a VR version of this game, the image of the game of the same type Cooking Simulator.
All these examples show how much the three subgenres presented remain unexplored. However, they are only a small part of the titles that seem to be ignored by players. According to Statista however, the total revenue of the simulation games segment is expected to reach $19,58 billion in 2022. So there is a bright future for this niche.
