Management games?

So that cabaret club game in Yakuza 0 has awakened a long dormant desire in me - for the management sim. To be clear, I'm not interested in building a city or a prison or a theme park. I'm just interested in managing a budget and hiring a crew of people to take on a busy professional environment ala Theme Hospital or Startopia or possibly Majesty.

This seems like the sort of game type that indie developers could handle easily, so you tell me, have any of them done so?

First games that come to mind are Project Highrise and Game dev tycoon

Game Dev Tycoon was really good but it grew old fast for me. I'm not sure why? Maybe I should head back to it... I've also heard good things about Project Highrise. Having said that, I'm going to follow this topic because I'm always looking for a good management game!

I've been hooked on them ever since Lemonade Stand and Roller Coaster Tycoon!

There's always Football Manager if you want to get crazy. I've heard Motorsport Manager and Out of the Park Baseball are good as well. You'll probably not get much out of them unless you care about the sports they're based on, but they're all solid management games.

Check out Game Dev Story on iOS and Android. It's not super complicated or deep, but it's a lot of fun. It's a few years old, so it isn't the most polished looking game.

If you enjoy Game Dev Story, you should check out a few more games from Kairosoft. They make two types of games (management and dungeon crawler), as for the management games my personal favorites are some of their first mobile ports (most are ports of their PC games from the late 90s/early 2000s if I remember), especially Grand Prix Story (racing), World Cruise Story (a cruise line manager), Mega Mall Story (self-explanatory), Pocket Stables (self-explanatroy) and Pocket Harvest (self-explanatory).

MGSV has a lot of micromanagement, from base building to sorting classes for your soildiers, etc

it's like playing with Excel lol

it's not particularly fun, but it's large part of the game.

I hear really great things about Prison Architect. Also, I really like Recettear, but that's more "I own a shop and have to manage that as well as play these dungeons in an RPG style." Probably closer to Harvest Moon.

@meka: I think OP is aware of that game since he stated that he's not interested in building a city or a prison or a theme park.

That limitation kind of makes it hard to recommend many games, since the management aspect is mostly used as a tool to govern the thing you create, whether it's a theme park , a prison or a city :)

@onemanarmyy: My mistake! It seems my eyes just glazed over it. Yeah, OP is really limited themselves, but there's always the SEGA Management bundle on Steam!

Second this. I sunk in dozens of hours into Game Dev Story. Once you've gotten a good group of developers the game kinda plateaus but the journey pf seeing your games gradually become better and selling more copies then winning awards is a fantastic feeling. It's also fun to experiment combining seemingly random genres and game types together and having great results!

Man, kind of a bummer that Theme Hospital is apparently still peak management sim. I mean it's a great game and probably not that hard to go back to even today, but you'd think someone would've made a competent clone/hommage or whatever in the last 20 years. I played about half an hour or so of Game Dev Story (or might have been Game Dev Tycoon?), and that did not scratch that itch at all.

Similar to Game Dev Story is Software Inc. It has you running a programming studio and hiring/firing staff and building your office in a way that felt a little Theme Hospital-ish to me.

Last time I played it, many updates ago, I thought I was going to be the biggest name in pc games, but due to a lack of up to date sound editing software I switched a small team over to making a new sound engine instead. When I released it, it was the bleeding edge of technology and that single product became the backbone of my studio. From what I remember in less than a year we had achieved nearly 90% of the market in audio software, so from then on all competing companies that wanted to use sound in their software either made their own inferior engine or paid me sweet sweet licensing money.

Not a fan of Game Dev Tycoon, I felt it was too focused on the product rather than the production.

I would like to recommend Capitalism Plus, although that may be a bit too macro-scale for your taste.

Football Manager is straight hard drugs.

Evil Genius has base building in it, so it's probably not your thing, but it does have a lot of management involved.

What about the Political Machine games? I never played them, but it seems to be a game about putting the right amount of time and money in the right states and staring at spreadsheets to make your decisions.

I'm not sure if big pharma or production line might scratch that itch?

Horse racing manager is pretty intense even parlors in Japan playing varations of it like it's real horse racing.

@veektarius: Game dev tycoon on Steam or on Google Play. Super addicting.

Transport Tycoon - Is probably something you really want to play. You don't build cities, rather you build your transportation company (Trainstations and Airplane Fields) and watch the cities grow automatically while you help out with infrastructure. It also has some of the most timeless songs ever.

Pizza Tycoon - Not related to Transport Tycoon and old game but a must play if you LOVE managing people (every part of your personal has specific skills) and you can also create your own menu with individualized Pizza.

War for the Overworld - is exactly what you want based on your description. It gets quickly going and is fun. If you know Dungeon Keeper I can tell you it is exactly that.

Man O' War Corsair - While its primarily an action game set in a open world, it requires constant personal management of your Crew. You can hire new board members, change their names, level them up and pay them. Leveling up can give them perks (that you can choose from) so you can personalise your own crew. Its still in Early Access.

A very good "only enjoy once in a while" management game is Faster Than Light. Manage your Crew so it can manage your ship and fight of baddies. Its easy to learn and simple to cont but hard as nails. Its a management game in its most barebones.

I would recommend you X3 - Albion Prelude but you don't do manage anything within the first 50 hours or so. Game is long (About 1000 hours) but when you amased your first 10+ million you can start creating your ownbusiness and have crews control every part of your transportation and trade business (which is vastly complex, mostly due to the rather subpar UI). Think of Transport Tycoon in Space but you start as the busdriver rather than already beginning to be the CEO of a company. Be warned, its a roguelike so your (business) decisions REALLY matter.

@dray2k: Thanks for the ideas. It is a shame that it appears that for the most part I was wrong that this is a genre that indie devs might thrive in.

I've looked at a couple YouTube videos of Man o' War and I might give that a try, but the production values sure leave something to be desired...