Constuctor Plus

Genre: Real-Time Strategy / Management Sim

Players: 1

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Review:

Constructor is a Real-Time Strategy game with elements of a Management Sim. Originally released on PC in 1997 and subsequently ported to other platforms, the game received an HD remaster in 2017 (thus the “Plus” in the title), with the Nintendo Switch getting a version of the game in 2019. Despite the game’s name and box art implying something along the lines of Sim City, Constructor is a different sort of game entirely, one where you play the role of a mob boss running a local workers’ union, and you’re building up your property empire while at the same time doing your best to sabotage the expansion of a rival gang.

While I never played the original Constructor to compare, I can say that the 2D visuals in Constructor Plus are nicely detailed, with some good (and often silly) animation. The music here is nothing noteworthy, but the various voiced characters, as well as the very British voiced tutorial, lend this game a lot of personality.

In terms of gameplay, I found myself struggling to get into this game, and then struggling to determine why it just wasn’t grabbing me the way I wanted, and I have to say it’s that I think that so much about this game is unintuitive. Simply building a new property in Constructor Plus is a multi-step process that involves purchasing a plot of land, ensuring that you have a foreman with workers assigned to them who isn’t currently assigned to other projects (if you’re lacking either foreman or workers, you’ll need to literally breed them and then assign the workers to the foreman), assign the foreman and his crew to work on the property, and wait. If you’re short on a resource, you’ll need to get a foreman and crew over to the factory that supplies that resource, all while construction holds up. Once the actual house is built, you’ll need to assign a tennant to move in (again, if you don’t have one available, you’ll need to breed one), as well as a repairman to keep the place from falling apart.

It goes beyond simply making everything in the game overcomplicated, though. Some elements of this game just don’t make much sense. For example, I repeatedly mentioned breeding different types of employees. I can’t imagine exactly how that’s supposed to go down in the game’s world. I’m picturing a mob-owned landlord going to a tennant with a grim look on his face saying “I’ve been informed to tell you that this month we will not be accepting rent in the form of money. Instead, you must deliver to us a child, who we will bring into our agency as a construction worker. You have thirty days, get to work. Oh, and we’ve upgraded your bedroom just to speed things along.”

Another strange facet of this game is that you can build on the rival gang’s properties, and it is actually encouraged to do so with undesirable elements like hippie communes and thief-spawning pawn shops. These, incidentally, you don’t need to breed to populate (I guess hippies and thieves just naturally produce themselves in this world). And the game inexplicably prevents you from buying a piece of land if you have another that’s not fully developed yet.

Then, there’s the controls, which take a good deal of getting used to. They work, they’re functional, but again… not intuitive. That is, unless you’re playing the game in handheld mode. One thing this game does very right is its touchscreen interface, which acts exactly as you’d hope it would, allowing for easy selection of properties and the on-screen buttons. This makes handheld play the vastly preferable way to play this game.

Finally, I feel it needs to be said that despite the game being set up as a competition between rival mobs working under the same conditions, there’s no multiplayer play here, which is really disappointing. This game definitely feels like it could have benefited from being able to compete with other players.

There is one other issue with this game that I should note, specifically for those who buy the physical release of the game – that physical release does not include a cartridge, just a download code for the game. So no matter which version of the game you get, you’ll still be using up over 4GB of space on your MicroSDXC card or your Nintendo Switch’s internal memory.

Despite my complaints, I don’t think Constructor Plus is a bad game. It’s definitely more of a Real-Time Strategy game than a Management Sim, despite appearances to the contrary, and as such I expect that many will try this out expecting it to be something it’s not. However, this also illustrates the core problem this game has of making everything unintuitive to the point where it’s hard to appreciate its interesting complexities. Those looking for a unique and unusual Strategy game on the Nintendo Switch might want to give this game a look, but most will find it not something they’re likely to get into.

tl;dr – Constructor Plus is more of a Real-Time Strategy game than a Management Sim, despite appearances, and it has you taking the role of a mob boss guiding workers to expand your empire while sabotaging the efforts of a rival gang. It’s a unique concept, but one that is made hard to appreciate thanks to the unintuitive nature of many elements of this game. I feel like there’s some good gameplay at the core of this game, but it’s not easy to get to it.

Grade: C-

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