Constructor
The Simulation with Street Smarts
What is it?
Some games, or so it seems, are forever doomed to be known mainly as the game that came before a better known or more popular sequel. So it is with Arena and Daggerfall, with Warcraft and Warcraft II. And Constructor, too, is known mainly as the forerunner of Street Wars: Constructor Underworld (released in the US as Mob Rule). And that is a pity, for in some ways it is the better game.
Constructor casts you in the role of a contractor. You start out with a headquarter and some staff. At first you can build only a lumber yard. Once it is built, three types of log cabins are available to you. When you have built at least one of each type, the almighty city council will grant you permission to build a cement yard, which makes three new types of houses available. It goes on this way through four different resources.
You then put tenants into your houses, which can either pay you rent or breed new tenants or workers, probably the weirdest aspect of the game. You can convert three workers to a repairman (needed to keep your buildings in shape) or four to a foreman. Workers can't do a thing without a foreman.
You can play on five maps (most of which are rather similar) alone (city builder style), against one or more computer players, or against real players over a network. I found playing against opponents rather stressful, since the game demands too much micromanagement for that.
For the longest time, there was very little about this game except the official website (gone by now), a list of cheats and a very inaccurate mini-FAQ, but September 2004 saw a new FAQ and an in-depth (though not flawless) strategy guide. I've started collecting my own experiences, which you will find below as a work in progress, and salvaged the old official website from the Wayback Machine.
There is a rumor that, according to contemporary issues of The Games Machine, Constructor was originally planned in 1991 or 1992 for the Amiga. I do not know if this is true, but Studio 3's main platform, before they turned to the PC, was the Commodore 64 (their greatest hit was The Last Ninja), not the Amiga. On their website they claim that Constructor was developed for PC, Playstation and Mac, but I could find no trace of a Macintosh version anywhere else.
Constructor has several downsides as well. While the interface is generally easy to use, it has a extremely annoying obmission; you cannot use the right mouse button to move your workers, which can get very annoying when you are trying to build up an area quickly before the AI moves in. Also, the game does not have much variety, and once you exhaust the initial charm and fun, it quickly becomes boring.
Constructor is a fun, tongue-in-cheek business simulation in the same style as MicroProse's early classic Pizza Tycoon. Essentially, Constructor takes the empire building and resource management of the best simulations and adds to it a strong dose of character interaction, humor, and strategic competition. Take the role of a real estate developer in a race to build up and manage resources, properties, environments, and human interaction, while trying to outperform and destroy rival development firms.
Constructor's social vision is agreeably cynical and merciless. Almost every character is represented by a gross caricature that's as true to life as it is unfair. The working classes are all string vests, poor grammar, bruises and stubble (and (ho ho!) that's just the women). The middle classes are grey, parsimonious, loveless-marriage types, who read the Daily Mail and spend their days spying on the neighbours or griping about the smallest inconvenience to themselves. The fortunate few who perch atop the social minaret are depicted as being similarly selfish, although their main vices are tiresome eccentricity and high-end corruption. And let's not forget all the incidental sideswipes at skinhead yobs, bikers, burglars, eco-conscious dope-smokers, and even serial killers that crop up along the way. Even the babies are ugly: they wouldn't look out of place on the cover of a Stephen King novel. Furthermore, there's a world-weary logic to many of the game design's most integral principles. For instance, in order to receive new workmen, it's necessary to encourage the lower classes to breed. If you want a gang of skinhead bastards with which to torment your opponent(s), you'll have to erect a depressing concrete tower block or two. And so on.
I found Constructor not only to be fun to play, but also fun to watch. The variety involved with the gameplay makes playing the different paradigms both challenging and rewarding. The graphics are excellent and the different animations along with the different video sequences are perfect for the gameplay. Combining all these aspects with the ability to play multiplayer games gives Constructor a well-balanced amount of varied gameplay. Having played other sim games over the years, it has been awhile that there has been a fresh take on the management of a whole community. Everything from the workers to the tenants added a personality to this game.
Strangely enough, the game I thought most of while playing Constructor (without an opponent, that is) was The Sims. Build houses; decorate them; keep the inhabitants happy; even if the ultimate goal of the game is different, there are many similarities in the things you do.
Beach Life, another management sim, shares the ironic view on its subject. There are no adversaries, but you can play Constructor without one, too.
Dungeon Keeper has the same mixture of resource management and combat (if you play Constructor with an opponent), and a good dose of black humor too.
The German Settlers series shares several concepts and the Wuselfaktor, the small sprites running around, forming a living world you can simply watch. I guess The Settlers II or The Settlers III would be closest.
Finally there is Pizza Tycoon and its sequels, which is exactly the same kind of business simulation cum mob activity.
