To note, Review code for the game was provided by game’s developer.

From humble beginnings to a profit monster, grow your skyscraper from the ground, to the stars.

The Story

There is actually not a traditional story mode in Project Highrise, instead there are multiple scenarios in which you will ultimately shoot for a goal. For example, the first scenario you play is in the hustling city of Chicago during the Great Depression. Your goal is to successfully re-create the historic Merchandise Mart, by becoming the hottest retail outlet in the city. Each scenario has 3 main goals and you are given a medal for each goal completed. You’ll need to earn a medal to advance to the next scenario. Each scenario is different as they all have different goals and settings.

So yeah, if you could make a suuuuper successful mall during the great depression, that’d be greeeeaaat.

The nice thing is this gives you an idea on how to properly plan out each floor and make sure you have the right utilities to ensure your floor tenants/businesses are able to keep their doors open! For example, an accounting office needs an electrical utility closet as well as phone lines so they can take incoming calls. If you forget to connect a utility that the business needs, you can pause time with the D-Pad and make the necessary changes, so you don’t end up with an angry business owner moving out!

The Gameplay

There is a lot that goes into creating the perfect skyscraper of your dreams. The gameplay is simple; build, ensure your tenants are happy, and profit! Now that sounds pretty easy right? Well, yes but not really. The easy part is building floor after floor after floor until you have the tallest building in the world! Ready for the hard part? The restaurant you just put in on floor 54 needs running water to ensure a successful launch. The water line is still down on the ground level. You can’t simply create another water line 54 floors off the ground. This restaurant was doomed from the beginning- would you like to try again?

Hi yes, is this the building owner? This is Dan’s Diner, we just opened up on the 54th floor, can we get some water up here please? No? Oh lord…

See the hardest part about Project Highrise is ensuring you have the proper utilities in the right place, ensuring that the large restaurant or dentist office you just put in has the necessary utilities to open up shop. This is accomplished with 3 easy steps. Building a utility closet and a water hookup on each floor, careful planning, and starting over for the 10th time because you’ve ran your dream of being a well known building owner into the ground!

This problem is usually thanks to expanding too fast, causing your money to plummet and making it impossible to make a profit. Don’t worry though, you can take out two loans from the bank to help offset your daily loss. Well… now you’re in $10,000 worth of debt that you have to try to dig yourself out of… aaaaaannd now it’s gone. You don’t have enough money to keep your building running! Your daily loss is at -$3,540 and you only have $1,000 after trying to keep afloat. Thank god this a simulation because you can get rid of that debt with a simple restart!

There are other ways to earn money than profit from your businesses. As it turns out, the city has a special interest in you and is willing to shell out thousands of dollars if you complete contracts for them. Some of these tasks are simple, have a population of 50 people in the building, while some take time and dedication, like having a daily profit of $20,000. The nice thing about these quests is you can accept them and receive some payment upfront and then the rest after completing the contract.

The city loves me and wants me to grow, they’ll never know about the tax evasion – Yoshi playing Project Highrise (probably)

As your population and daily profit grows, you will accumulate buzz and prestige. Prestige makes it so you can put bigger and more upscale businesses in your building. You’ll need a few stars in prestige in order to place large restaurants or large department stores in your building. Buzz works a little differently however, once you accumulate enough buzz you can use it to hold special promotions that will last 24 hours. These promotions can range from increasing sales revenue to halving the cost of maintenance closets and rooms. Each time you spend some buzz for a promotion, the amount of buzz you need for the next promotion increases. Be sure to weigh the pros of each promotion and your current situation before you get trigger happy.

Buzz buzz muchachos, let’s get this promotion poppin’.

Hands down the hardest part of Project Highrise is trying to find the balance between expansion and success. I started over more times than I care to admit, I was so caught up on what I could create, I didn’t stop to think if I should have created them. My advice to you is to start slow! Building 3-4 floors, fill them with small offices, a few restaurants and wait until you start making a profit to actually expand. This can get kind of boring as you are watching a screen with limited animations. The only real movement is the people/workers walking through your building. You can speed up time with the D-pad but if something goes wrong or a tenant becomes upset and you’re not paying attention, you may end up hearing the screeching tires of a moving van and an empty floor where the accounting office was. Project Highrise is all about balance. You’ll want to utilize the time mechanics to help you stop, look at business’s happiness level, see what tenants are requesting and speed up the wee hours of the night so you can get down to business in the day. This is a bittersweet mechanic as mentioned above, if you use the speed up button you’ll need to keep a close eye on the happiness on your tenants.

This -$36 a day loss can turn into the thousands in record breaking time if you’re not careful! Open spaces are good spaces.

Art, Music and Writing

Now, you’re not going to get anything groundbreaking in this department with Project Highrise, however I do think it’s full of charm. The background music is a nice blend of city noises and an upbeat track that I honestly felt was pretty relaxing. I would listen to the background music in the future if I just needed something to play while studying or writing. The city noises are a nice mix of car horns, busses stopping and cars passing by. Project Highrise handles this well as the horns and brakes are never obnoxious, and helps add to the immersion of a building in the city. One of the finer details of this game is that you can zoom in on your individual business and listen to what is happening. The restaurants play music, the offices have the slight hum of technology at work, you can hear the cash register cashing someone out. These small details are a welcome inclusions that adds life to the 2D images.

The artstyle is pretty basic, nothing is going to blow you away but the details make up for the 2D models. For the most part shops each have unique settings dependant on the type of shop. For example the shoe shop has a round table and shelves that display the various shoes available for purchase but also shows shoe boxes. The purse shop looks similar but changes shoe shelves for wall shelves to help display their high end LV bags. I’m just kidding, they’re not actually Louis Vuitton bags, but your shoppers don’t know that! A nice touch to the shops is the general wear and tear you can see in the picture below. The shoe shop is looking a little grimey and run down. Make sure you set aside some money to have your maintenance workers do some deep cleaning every couple days.

I’m not sure how a shoe store can get this grimey but it’ll have your customers going Ugh instead of buying those Uggs. Clean up on floor 11!

Another neat aspect is the day and night cycle. As night comes, your employees all go home and rest up for the day ahead, the background will slowly transition from bright blue skies to a nice auburn sunset, to the black blanket of the night sky. Project Highrise does have a weather system as well. You can see and hear when it is a rainy day or on a clear sunny day you can watch the clouds roll past your building. It’s a nice mechanic that can add some extra struggles, for example if it rains you may not get your normal crowd of customers which causes your businesses to have a slow day resulting in some unhappy employees.

What a beautiful day for tax evas…profit! I mean profit!

Problems

The Switch received an overall solid port of Project Highrise. I only had the game crash once in my 15 hours of play, it was just after I downloaded the game though. It did take a minute to get used to the controls however. One complaint I have is the menu system can be a little wonky when you are trying back out after you’ve installed a fixture. There is no quick exit button, you have to continuously press B until you are back at the main menu. It took some getting used to but after a few hours I had it nailed down. I never witnessed any frame rate drops or stuttering, the graphics, music and flow of the game is overall enjoyable.

Summary

Overall I enjoyed my time spent with Project Highrise: Architect Edition. The art design, music and general aesthetic makes a pleasurable experience while you deal with the difficulties and tribulations of running a successful powerhouse of a skyscraper. You may run into some difficulties at the beginning trying to figure out the perfect way to balance expansion and profit but once you find your groove, you can guarantee that you’ll be on your way to become a billionaire! Project Highrise: Architect edition has a current price of $39.99 retail. I wouldn’t hesitate to get this game on sale if you are a fan of city simulation games. I’m giving Project Highrise an 8/10 for my review.

Are you a building sim fan? Do you think you could do better at the game than Luke? Let us know over on Twitter or join the SIF community Discord.

The following two tabs change content below. Bio

Latest Posts Luke-Anthony Born and raised in Utah, video games have been a huge part of his life. From winning Destiny tournaments to competing in Pokemon Battling, he is no stranger to trying new genres and games! His favorite game series include Pokemon, Pikmin, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts and Ys. He will always have a soft spot for Stardew Valley and Fe. Latest posts by Luke-Anthony see all) Half Past Fate Switch Review - April 20, 2020

Bloodroots Switch Review - March 20, 2020

We. The Revolution Switch Review - July 1, 2019

Like this: Like Loading...