Project Highrise

Project Highrise
Project Highrise logo
Developer(s)	SomaSim[*]
Publisher(s)	Kasedo Games
Producer(s)	Andrew McKerrow
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, macOS
Release	September 8, 2016
Genre(s)	Simulation
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Project Highrise is a 2D tower-building simulation game, developed and published by Kasedo Games, and considered by many to be the spiritual successor to SimTower.^[1][2] In the game, players take on the role of a high-rise manager, who is responsible for building and maintaining a tower block, filling it with offices, apartments, shops and restaurant, which they support with utilities and provide specialised services to satisfy the resident and tenants of the building.

The game was released worldwide on September 8, 2016, through online digital distribution platforms, primarily Steam and GOG.com, and has received generally positive reviews. The game has spawned two DLC packs, which provided additional gameplay features and content.

Gameplay

In Project Highrise, players take on the role of a tower block manager, who is responsible for building and expanding a tower block, maintaining it in good conditions, and ensuring that it has the necessary utilities and services to appease its tenants and staff. Although the gameplay functions in a similar manner to that of SimTower, there are various areas where it differs greatly.

Players have the ability to lay out where they want floors, as well as place where they want staircases, elevators, and utilities to be in their high-rise, whereupon a construction crew builds them before they can be properly utilized by the building's residents and visitors; new floors won't be built, until they have a staircase or elevator connecting them to the rest of the building. For the four main room types - offices, shops, restaurants and apartments - players must wait until a floor is built before they can lay these down, while construction crews won't build them until the player chooses the tenants who will occupy them. For most of the rooms that are built, players must ensure they are supplied with various types of utilities, of which the game has five that can be supplied to the tower - power, water, gas, phones, and cable TV. Each utility requires a generator to be built in the underground floors - all have three different sizes, which vary in costs and the amount they can supply - and require cables/pipes to be connect rooms to the generators, with utility cabinets also needing to be built to connect rooms on different floors to the utility network. In addition to utilities, some rooms require a trash service to function properly; players must establish bins for both recyclable and non-recyclable on the floors were trash collection is required, and a waste retrieval service for each type in the underground floors.

The type of tenant that the player can have to occupy the four main room types, vary in what utilities they need and what services they require, with higher paying tenants requiring a greater wealth of utilities and services to satisfy them, as well as also having other requirements fulfilled, such as being distanced from sources of noise and smell; some requirements are based on the type of room the tenant occupies, such as shops preferring a high traffic area, and some large offices not wanting to be too close to elevators. In addition, both offices and apartments require a selection of services, depending on their size and type of tenant occupying them, while shops cannot be occupied until a storage room is provided for them, with each allowing four shop tenants to move in and operate in the tower. Furthermore, all four main room types begin to degrade in quality once occupied, eventually showing conditions of dilapidation after a period of time; tenants will not wish to work/live in rooms of such conditions, so players must regularly send out maintenance teams to repair and clean up such rooms at a cost, but require a office for such crews before they can do so. If tenants become deeply unsatisfied with the conditions they are in for too long, they will eventually leave; players are notified when such an event occurs. To prevent this, players can monitor a tenant's satisfaction by checking on their room and addressing their issues. The amount of rent a tenant provides can be changed, either to increase satisfaction, or increase the tower's income if the resident is well satisfied with the tower.

As a tower improves and becomes better, it will earn Prestige. Unlike the Star Level mechanic of SimTower, reaching a certain amount of Prestige unlocks new services and items to decorate the tower, and larger sizes of utility generators and main room types. To earn Prestige, players must ensure residents are satisfied, but can also earn more from putting down art and completing special tasks. Along with prestige, players can also earn "Buzz" and "Influence". Earning Buzz requires ensuring that shops and restaurants are satisfied with conditions in the tower and the amount of customers they receive, which can then be spent on media campaigns, each of which confers a benefit that can range from reduced construction and running costs of certain tower elements, to boosting satisfaction for one of the main room types, along with other benefits, which lasts for a short while; the amount of Buzz needed to start any media campaign, increases after each use. Influence, earned by satisfying wealthier apartment and office tenants, can be used to unlock upgrades for the tower and its management from one of three tracks - aesthetics, politics, and management. Once the player has built an office for a consultant of the appropriate track, they can spend influence on acquiring an upgrade from that track, which can include providing new building options, allowing the player to expand the tower beyond initial limits (both floor and tile size), and improve the work of building staff; each upgrade that is purchased increases the amount of influence needed to unlock a new upgrade, regardless of the track it is in. Once all upgrades in a track are acquired, influence that then be used to purchase a fast-track option that varies between each track.

To assist with the management of the tower, players can utilize a variety of overlays to monitor satisfaction, the profitability of rooms, traffic, and other factors in the tower, while viewing a variety of reports, such as reports into the revenue and profit a tower is making, the amount of residents and visitors to the tower, and the thoughts of people within the tower. In addition, players can undertake special contracts to earn additional money, as well as prestige, buzz, or influence, to help with the construction and management of their tower; most contracts offer a small advance in cash when a contract is accepted, though players can only accept two at any one time.

Players can choose one of two options, when starting a new game. The first allows them to play an open-ended game where they can set what limits they have and the difficulty they face, in which case they being with a simple one-storey building with a basement that contains a small power generator and a construction crew. The second consists of scenarios, each of which varies in difficulty, from restrictions to certain build options and the size of the tower block, in which players are given control to build or manage and expand a pre-built tower, and attempt to complete a set of three goals that the scenario has; only a few are available for players to try out, with new ones being unlocked when players complete at least one of the three goals in the available scenarios.

DLC Content

Project Highrise: Las Vegas

The first expansion pack for Project Highrise was released on 13 April, 2017, and expanded on the gameplay by including the ability for players to create high-rise resort hotels, adding in entertainment venues and casinos, hiring VIPs, and providing a new variety of hotel services for guests. Although the gameplay mechanics function in a similar manner to that of SimTower, the expansions new features have far greater differences between the two games.

Construction of the new rooms, decorations and hotel services, functions in a similar manner to the other options, though there are noticeable differences. Firstly, hotel rooms can't be laid down until a front desk is established in the tower's ground floor, and are restricted to the floors above it; more deluxe rooms require the construction of an upscale front desk before guests will chose to use them, as well as the player having the appropriate amount of Prestige to construct them. Like apartments, the quality of the room that the player choose it to be, determines what services and utilities need to be provided to ensure that guests are satisfied; one service that must be provided is housekeeping, as guests will not take a room if it has not be cleaned up after it's previous occupant checks out, though to ensure that housekeeping staff can do their work, a service elevator must be built to allow them to transport their carts between floors, which other building staff can use alongside stairs and elevators. More luxurious hotel rooms will require not only a wide variety of the original game's existing utilities, but also a new utility - air conditioning - which is constructed and maintained in the same fashion as the others utilities.

To compliment the resort hotel aspects introduced by Project Highrise: Las Vegas, players now have access to a new branch of upgrades, Tourism, which can help to improve the efficiency of the hotel as well as unlock new building options; players can unlock upgrades in this branch, once an office for a consultant in this branch, is built. If the player unlocks all upgrades, they can then spend Influence on the branch's fast-track option, which nullifies negative hotel reviews. In addition, Buzz can also be spent on media campaigns that can promote double-bed hotel rooms, attract more guest bookings, make entertainment venues more effective, and allow players to get more entertainers to chose from.

Keeping guests happy includes not only providing them with appropriate services, but also providing them with a good variety of places to eat, and venues to relax and enjoy. Players can build lounges and conference rooms for guests, once a front desk is built and Tourism consultant is set up in the hotel resort, but while these require different utilities and services to function, they won't be utilized fully until the player hires VIP performers to work in them; the more expensive a VIP, the more satisfaction they can provide guests. The satisfaction of guests can be monitored on a separate report sheet, which also includes reviews they made of their visit, detailing what they enjoyed and the problems they had with the room; earning positive reviews helps players, as this increases bookings made on their rooms, while negative reviews have the reverse effect. Other reports also detail the numbers of rooms of each type, the amount currently occupied and that have been cleaned, the price each room type is set at (which the player can change via a separate function in the hotel reports), along with additional reports on the performance of the hotel. Apart from hotel rooms, players can also earn revenue from the establishment of casino rooms, which can be utilized by both hotel guests and visitors.

Project Highrise: Miami Malls

The second expansion pack for Project Highrise was released on 13 July, 2017, and expanded upon the commercial aspects of the gameplay so players can build high-rise shopping malls. This included modifying existing mechanics regarding the construction of stores and the behavioral patterns of visitors, along with adding a number of new features to the game, some of which now change how players satisfy store tenants.

Unlike in the base game, the expansion now removes the need for players to earn enough prestige to put down their first store, instead allowing players to put down small-sized stores from the start of a new game. However, different store types at varying sizes require the player to now provide certain services to ensure that the tenant that occupies them is satisfied greatly. Such services include providing mall security staff, and the addition of demonstration booths to perk up customer numbers; players can even build observation decks on the higher levels of a tower to attract more visitors to their high-rise building. In addition, players can now lay down the foundation for expansive stores, build larger fountains and also build large storage bays, with each capable of allowing the player to establish 15 stores between them, unlike the smaller storage bays. Furthermore, players have access to fifteen new types of stores and restaurants, and can now also provide additional transit options for visitors to use; while the base game allowed players to build a metro station, they can now also include a bus station outside the tower building, and a railroad station, within the plot of their high-rise.

Reception

It has a score of 74% on Metacritic.^[3]

References

Further reading

• Smith, Graham (April 29, 2016). "Project Highrise Aims To Be A Modern SimTower". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. 
• Collazo, Natalie (March 28, 2016). "Build Your Way Up in 'Project Highrise'". Hardcore Gamer. 
• "Project Highrise Announced". Blue's News. February 23, 2016.