Planned Release Date: Q1 2027

About This Game

Games Mag Tycoon costs about as much as a full game on a magazine cover disc back in the nineties. So this is how it would have looked:

You used to read the magazines. Now you make one.

You are the editor-in-chief, somewhere between 1986 and 2010, the golden age of games magazines. The issue is empty, the print date is set, and the publisher is already asking about the print run.

An empty issue and a deadline

Monday morning, a small office, three desks, an empty magazine. This month's games are piled up, and someone has to decide who reviews what. That someone is you. The clock runs in real time, and at the end of the month the issue goes to print. Finished or not.

Classics to review

The big games land on your desk the moment they come out, from 8-bit home computers to HD consoles. Your team hands out the scores, and the publishers are reading along. A slating for the hit of the year? Go ahead. Someone else will just book the next ad. With mods from the Steam Workshop you can change all the data to your liking.

Everything is your job

Covers, cover discs, tips & tricks, your own video show: all your business. Plus a team with favourite genres and moods. The publisher wants to see sales, the advertisers want the best spots in the magazine. And you have one goal: to send the publisher into retirement.

And then the readers talk back

At the newsstand you stand next to the competition, and you can even read their magazines. Then the post arrives. Your readers tell you what they love, what they miss and why next month they might buy the other magazine instead. There is no manual for the perfect magazine. Only readers who tell you.

Games Mag Tycoon at a glance

• 25 years of gaming history, 1986 to 2010, start in any year
  
• Reviews, covers, cover discs, video, tips & tricks
  
• An editorial team with strengths and moods
  
• Readers who give you honest feedback
  
• Mods via the Steam Workshop
  
• German and English, Windows and Steam Deck

Editorial

Hi, I'm Stefan, and not a real company, more of a nerd really. Like many people, I started programming at school in the nineties, but I never fulfilled the obvious dream of turning it into a game, even though I have been a software developer for almost 25 years now. But now it has happened.

I subscribed to German games magazines like PC Player and later GameStar, and I grew up with business sims: Fugger, Kaiser, Anstoss, The Patrician and, again and again, MAD TV and MAD News. At some point the German podcast Stay Forever did an episode on MAG!!!, a game in which you run a games magazine. The idea was obvious: why not combine the two? A games magazine manager, but not a dry one. Like MAD TV instead: walking around, riding the lift, racing the clock.

And of course I always wanted to work for those magazines back then. Either way, I believe there is something magical about living through that era once more: seeing the games and the magazines again and trying it for yourself. If you still love games like these as much as I do: this game is for you.

Stefan aka Olabandi

PS: No joke, I once actually got a review into the German Sat.1 teletext. You still had to fax it in, and as a reward I got Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail … a long time ago.

Note

Games Mag Tycoon is a fictional business simulation. All games, magazines, companies, devices and people in the game are invented. Any resemblance to real games, magazines, brands or names is purely coincidental and does not mean that their owners are in any way connected to Games Mag Tycoon or oLabAndI; they have neither supported nor endorsed the game.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

AI was only used for bulk texts (data records). The translations are currently also made with AI. The music is original music by me and my band, but I adapted its style with AI. I generated the graphics with code; no AI image generation was used. The game does not use AI at runtime.