+ Gameplay
+ Replayability
+ Building/Office Design
+ Realism
+ Developer
+ Stability
+ Peer Game Comparison
+ Procedurally Generated Worlds
+/- Learning Curve
+/- Graphics
+/- Sound
+/- Difficulty
+/- Interface
+/- Modability
+/- Optimization
- Music
- Campaign

I will mark whether I like something +, dislike something -, or am neutral +/- as I write the review.

You start as the founder of a software company in a standard sandbox enviroment +/-. You can choose the difficulty, speed of gameplay, starting funds, starting time period, traits, and skills of your founder +. You are able to set a basic appearance for the founder, but this is clearly not a focus of the game +/-.

You cannot customize the size/capabilities of the competition outside of the basic difficulty selector -. This games does not simulate real companies and products, but it does realistic simulate technical progress +/-. That means you won't find Microsoft or Valve in the game. On the plus side, this means the market is unique to each playthrough, vastly improving replayability +.

Once you set up your world, the game will simulate a number of years before your start date. This creates a background market (operating systems and some other various basic programs are already on the market) in the game...the software industry does not spring out of nowhere +.

You start off by designing your office which can be a challenge in your first game +/-. The building interface is reminiscent of the Sims and is very intuitive and the interface flags things that you might have forgotten (temperature control, for instance). The office is fully 3D, and you can make very impressive multi-level structures +. Because of the time dilation, office optimization is much more important in this game than in real life (takes a lot longer for an employee to get somewhere than in real life) -, but that is par for the entire tycoon genre +/-.

You make profit generally by releasing software or doing contract work for other companies. The game accounts for personnel management and some basic asset handling (insurance, your stocks, pension, investment in other companies, and your distribution vector). This kind of stuff is information heavy and marks it as a more serious management game compared to a casual simulation (which is a + for me).

The nuts and bolts of the game is in balancing your cash flow so that you can produce software in a timely manner but also somehow pay for your employees in the mean time. This appears to be an accurate portrayal of the industry from an outsider's perspective (I am a banker, not a tech company developer in real life) +.

Personnel management is well developed. Employees are individualized with looks, traits and compatability. They can be assigned to teams, request raises, get sick, come in late and go to training/education +, There is an HR level in the game that can be automated which means hiring/firing/assignment/raises etc can be delegated to in-game employees. The same exists for project leads which allows you to scale your business to the dozens or potentially hundreds of employees and not be -as- bogged down in micromanagement +.

There is a basic R&D component in the game, centering around patents +/-. The implementation at this point is not very good -, but it is a new feature at the time of this review. Otherwise, tech progress is a function the game year and not otherwise controllable. At this time, research is not a major part of the gameplay -.

There is a large selection of software types and the 'features' that make them up. The more features, the more powerful the product, but the more time it takes to develop. Software Inc. does a very good job in tying together the various kinds of software you develop together +. For example, you use your visual and audio editors (or license another company's) as well as a game engine to produce a game. This is quite natural and lets you enjoy intermediate products (editors, for instance) as well as the more well-known end-user ones (games, etc.) +.

Marketing exists in Software Inc., but only in a basic fashion. You can choose your vector (internet, radio, etc.) and simply pour money and manpower into it +/-. This is being fleshed out to include timing releases with marketing in the next update +. There is a similar gameplay depth in running servers and your own (abstracted) store. In the next update, physical distribution (printing your software onto media to be shipped out) is also being added to the game.

The difficulty curve is inverted. It is quite difficult in the beginning and becomes easier +/-. While this is similar to reality, games tend to avoid this. It is too cheap to scale your company -. After your breakthrough release, the game is easy -. The other gameplay scales fairly well and plays interestingly at both the one-person company level to the I don't know the names of all of my employees level +.

The structural and world graphics are nice enough for this level of game +/-, but are not comparable to larger budget sims (Planet Coaster for instance). In particular, character models and animation are still quite weak -, but they've improved significantly recently +. There is a feature to save layouts for buildings in game, which is a massive + for replayability (if you don't want a unique office in every game), and there is a function for copying individual rooms if you want to copy/paste standardized designs in your structure(s).

Software Inc. supports mods and the workshop +. Because the gameplay design is in flux, gameplay mods are usually broken and the community is small -. Most 'mods' are office designs -.

Sound quality in the game is not memorable +/-. If there is music (and I don't think there is), I can't remember it at all, even after a lot of hours -. Audio production is clearly not a goal for this game which is reasonable for the genre +/-.

It is very bug-free for an EA title, but bugs do exist. Stability is no concern in this game +. Because it is developed on Unity, it is not ever going to be greatly optimized -, but the current state of optimization is sufficient for its scope +/-. It is too heavy for its weight, but that doesn't make it a heavyweight game, so to speak +/-.

There is no tutorial/campaign mode -. It is pure sandbox, so if you are expecting a narrative or progressive objectives (do this, do that!), this is not the game for you. I never play the campaigns in tycoon type games myself, so this isn't a concern +/-. No campaign means you are thrust into the thick of it, relying on the interface to teach you the game -. It wasn't a big problem for me, but for players who are not genre-savvy, it could be a concern +/-.

This is an EA game run by a single developer made on Unity. Be aware of this if you buy this game +/-. That said, the developer is both industrious and transparent (has a public development Trello). In other words, you don't need to trust the developer. You can check on his progress at any time and make your own judgment. Because of these traits, I have great faith in the developer +. Just Google Trello and Software Inc. if you want to check it.

At this point, the developer could release the game and abandon it and would be a decent game that I would recommend +, and in its current state can give many players a good cost/hour ratio. This is a safe purchase in that sense +.

Software Inc. is a good game. It shines as an example of a successful single-dev EA game. However, the genre has weak competition and is not well developed. There are some game development simulators out there, and I enjoyed Mad Games Tycoon, but it is a different class of game. Software Inc. feels and plays like a PC game. The other ones feel and play like console/mobile games, if you understand my comparison. If you want a more streamlined, casual/arcadey simulator, this may not be the game for you. Software Inc. is more akin to Football Manager in a genre full of FIFAs (+ for me).