Silicon Valley: Billionaire review - A sim that doesn't bring in the big bucks

Silicon Valley: Billionaire is a game that mixes a bunch of casual genres together to make something that’s not quite as great as the sum of all of its parts.

There are chunks of Tiny Tower here, as well as some Sim-style elements and more than a sprinkling of a clicker as well.

But there’s none of the charm of Kairosoft or Nimblebit’s best, and the tappy elements feel like they’re more of a distraction than anything else.

While the theme here might be technology companies, it could be anything really. The setting is essentially the gloss that coats the mechanics, and it could be any colour.

You’re basically building a new tower, filling it with employees, and trying to make as much money as possible. The end product of your endeavours is essentially meaningless.

It’s not just about hiring and building though. You need to train your company, improve a variety of different facets of your business, and upgrade the rooms in your increasingly towering tower.

You can trade stocks as well, and merge with other companies to make even more money. Essentially it’s capitalism the video game.

The tapping elements involve either poking reluctant employees to make them get back to the grind, or mashing workers with lightbulbs above their heads to get the most out of their bright ideas.

There’s a lot happening, but in essence there’s not that much to actually do. You build your vertical empire and then sort of poke at it every now and then.

The simple compulsion loop of other tower sims gets a little obfuscated by the other gewgaws, but they don’t add enough to make your stay in the valley worthwhile.

Instead it’s sort of a bumbly collection of concepts that you get the feeling looked better on the drawing board than it does on the screen.

Tower down

In the end Silicon Valley: Billionaire feels like one of those long lost dot com bubble start ups. It had an idea, it ran with it, and then it ended bankrupt and shut down.

There’s some fun to be had here, but it’s a sort of fun that’s tempered. It does a lot of stuff, but it’s a lot of stuff that you’ve seen done better and differently elsewhere.

If you’re jonesing for the sort of casual sim that the game offers then it’ll scratch an itch, otherwise it’s worth looking elsewhere for your digital money-earning entertainment.