Software Star

Copyright : Addictive | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

Software Star allows you to try your hand at running a successful software company. You have to cope with staff problems, advertising, financial problems and more while trying to produce chart topping successful games.

The most famous beard in computing wasn?t restricted to Football Manager you know! Software Star was the first departure for Kevin Toms from the beautiful game but despite the changing scenario, fans of the original Football Manager while find Software Star a friendly face.

Graphics

A fairly primitive text based presentation dominates Software Star and to be honest it actually looks older and less advanced than Football Manager. To be honest, there?s not much else that could be done with the visuals and I both understand and appreciate that but it?s hard to get excited by what is essentially pages and pages of text and basic graphs.

Having said that, the presentation is neat, tidy and easy to take in. At least the colours change from screen to screen which at least gives the impression that you?re looking something different.

Sound

A kind of vidi-printer noise runs almost incessantly throughout the game while the text is appearing on screen. Unsurprisingly this soon becomes irritating and the old volume switch is the order of the day. It does mean you miss out on the sound of your game creeping up the charts on a kind of piano scale, the higher the position, the higher the note. You?re not missing much.

Gameplay

Best described as Football Manager for people who don?t like football games, Software Star is a clever concept in so far as that everyone who plays it has to have an interest in computer games! Taking control of a software house is a fairly interesting idea and initially you?ll have great fun coming up with the names of the next big software hits and making decisions over where to concentrate your selling efforts. Unfortunately, the problems that blight football management games don?t just stop at the subject matter.

At the end of this day, this game is simply a matter of observing statistics and blind luck. Just as football management games have become very dated when compared with modern examples, Software Star has failed to remain anywhere near cutting edge.

The biggest disappointment though is the fact that the core subject of the game, creating new software, is the element you have the least control over - at the end of the day all you can do is name it and choose when to release it. The sales all depend on the quality of review you receive and with no input into the quality of the game (save deciding when to launch and the amount of development time given to the titles). That really says it all I?m afraid.

Having said that, Software Star does provide some fun even if the game could never be accused of realism (how many fledgling software houses do you think can afford to spend thousands of pounds on advertising and keep games in development for up to six months at a time!) but the novelty soon wears off as the realisation that all you are doing is pressing buttons whenever you are prompted to with little skill involved.

The game is extremely difficult to win, even on the easiest setting as luck does have unevenly large part to play in proceedings.

It is hard to pigeon hole exactly who will like Software Star - there?s not enough going on to satisfy action fans and there isn?t enough depth for strategy heads but it can kill an hour or so on a wet Wednesday afternoon.