Guide: Best Nintendo Switch Management And Tycoon Games
Are you the kind of person who — how do we say this politely — really likes everything a very particular way? Perhaps you’ve got your kitchen cupboards labelled and filled with neat rows of boxes, or you always take point on group projects because you know you’ll make better slides than everyone else?
You, my friend, are well-suited to management games — simulators that approximate what it would be like to run a zoo, or a hospital, or a city, or a university, or a theme park, or a… you get the point. These games on Switch allow you to live out your fantasy of being in control of every minute thing, from staff wages to the colour of balloons in your park. How do you win? When everything runs as smoothly as the finish on a Joy-Con, that’s how.
Most of us will never get the chance to run a zoo, or a hospital, or a city, or a university, or a theme park, but we can play these games instead. We’ve managed (heh) to find out which management and tycoon games are best on the Switch, just for you!
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Publisher: Frontier Developments / Developer: Frontier Developments
Jurassic World Evolution: Complete Edition on Switch is a feature-packed and surprisingly playable port of a hugely entertaining and tactical business sim that provides a ton of fun for fans of the genre and Jurassic Park nuts alike. There are undeniably problems in handheld where the visuals take a pretty big hit and the framerate does struggle here and there in docked but, if you can deal with these issues, you’ll find one of the most straight-up fun management sim offerings currently available on Switch. So, who’s hungry?
Publisher: SEGA / Developer: Two Point Studios
Harkening back to the “good old days” of Theme Hospital from Bullfrog in the ’90s, Two Point Hospital wraps the same irreverent humour into a modern game that introduces a whole new generation to the joys of medicine. This is a game about managing expectations as well as a hospital. Patients expect to be treated and healed, staff expect to earn pay raises, and health inspectors expect not to have to come in and shut the whole operation down. In practice, it boils down to building a hospital and trying to keep the lights on, and as an added bonus, keep the patients alive.
The highest praise we can give Two Point Hospital is that it feels impossible not to have fun with it. It’s zanier than an episode of Scrubs and shot through with some of the most satisfying sim gameplay of any title this generation.
Oh, and the Jumbo Edition includes a ton of DLC, so it’s even better than the original!
Publisher: SEGA / Developer: Two Point Studios
After the excellent Two Point Hospital released on Switch moments before the world was rocked by a global pandemic, Two Point Studios are at it yet again with Two Point Campus. If the name hadn’t made it clear already, rather than running a hospital for money, Two Point Campus has you running a university campus… for money. Capitalism and management sims go hand-in-hand, what can you do?
Luckily, Two Point Campus is a masterclass management sim game bursting with creative new ideas and a wholly original approach to success. Its wholesome ‘invest in students and they’ll invest in you’ strategy is a beautiful way to put a positive spin on an otherwise NPC-exploitative genre.
Publisher: Double Eleven / Developer: Introversion Software
Video games have treated us to all manner of simulation jobs over the years. We’ve built hospitals, maintained zoos, tilled farmland and even built roller coasters that were definitely not safe for anyone to ride.
But what about building and running your very own prison? Now that’s a whole other kettle of incarcerated fish. Do you rule with an iron grip and risk mass riots, or do you pamper your prisoners with lavish affection? Whatever your management style, Prison Architect: Nintendo Switch Edition has every possible tool, resource and scenario you could possibly ask for.
Publisher: Kalypso Media / Developer: Limbic Entertainment
You’d be forgiven for thinking that a city builder/sim game such as Tropico 6 might be a poor fit for the Switch. A huge number of systems at play, an archipelago’s worth of individually tracked citizens… it’s something of a recipe for compromise. And, sure enough, there are compromises here – but far fewer than you may expect, and not to the game’s real detriment.
We’d recommend this to genre newbies as well as veterans; a very impressive port with strong controls and a UI tailored brilliantly for handheld mode. It’s a busy, demanding game but never feels stressful, and juggling your industry, faction relationships and the mood of your citizens can be thoroughly absorbing.
Publisher: Wube Software / Developer: Wube Software
If you’ve ever wanted to harness the power of industrialisation, Factorio is certainly the game for you. Stranded on a strange alien world, you must find a way to survive and escape this place using the vestiges of technology left behind by whoever came here first, as well as your own innovations. This is a factory sim with a sci-fi aesthetic and just a touch of exploration mixed in. What starts off simple builds into one of the most engrossing management sims we’ve played.
Like the gears in an engine, everything in Factorio has a purpose. There is little in terms of extras here but what is present in this factory management sim does its job beautifully.
Publisher: No More Robots / Developer: Springloaded
We’ve all walked around a zoo and wondered just how hard it could be to run one. After all, you just need to get the animals in one place and keep them from escaping, right? However, if the plethora of zoo management sims on the market is anything to go by, there is a lot more to it. While many of the games in this ever-growing niche offer players the chance to dive into the finer details of zoo ownership, Let’s Build a Zoo keeps things on the more cartoonish, lighthearted side while also providing a decent challenge.
Publisher: Frontier / Developer: Frontier Developments
Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 has been riding the rails since way back in 2004, a wonderfully colourful and silly, but also satisfyingly in-depth sim game that was the very first in the long-running series to have its theme parks represented in three whole dimensions – you can even jump aboard your elaborate creations for a terrifying spin from a first-person perspective, if you’re brave enough.
The aim of the game here is a simple one: create amusement parks that please visiting hordes of peeps and make you a ton of sweet moolah so you can keep expanding, adding facilities and building monstrous rollercoasters that strike a balance between being terrifying enough to thrill but not so dangerous that punters end up covered in their lunch or buried headfirst in the surrounding terrain.
Publisher: Curve Digital / Developer: Playsport Games
A port of Motorsport Manager Mobile 3, Motorsport Manager is a handheld roller-coaster of emotions. That’s mainly because the third entry in this mobile series is the first one in years to really embrace a sense of hardcore realism.
There’s a mountain of systems and subsystems to juggle, and even with a nicely designed tutorial, you’re really only scratching the surface of what’s to come when your career begins. Its presentation has been given a stylish makeover that makes it look something straight out of a Codemasters production, while the sheer depth you can delve into will often stress you and elate you just as much as driving the cars themselves. Even if you’re not particularly a fan of professional racing, the sleek presentation and impressive level of customisation will definitely appeal.
