Optimize your production chains in the free preview for minimalist sim Masterplan Tycoon

(Image credit: Bureau Bravin)

There's now a free prologue-style preview for the minimalist resource management sim Masterplan Tycoon, just released this week in the form of Masterplan Tycoon: Foundations. The demo takes you through early stages of building out your empire of flowing stuff, letting you plop down camps, quarries, farms, and factories.

Masterplan Tycoon's basic concept is that it's more a blueprint or outline of a resource management game than a dedicated, in-depth resource transportation and logistics extravaganza. That really shows up in how it's laid out: There's no clock ticking down and no real penalty for making any mistakes other than having to tear up and rebuild chunks of your network.

That's best explained by how you connect your little boxy buildings: You just drag and drop a pin between the in and out nodes on either side of them. Once that's done, voila, the resources start flowing and you're good to go.

The short demo guides you through the process of setting up production chains for some early resources like planks, bread, beer, clothes, and bricks. It's a sound intro to what's good and bad about the full game. It's simple and straightforward, but that also means that you can have trouble figuring out what's going wrong when somewhere in that big flowchart a resource is backing up or something's not getting the upkeep it needs.

Either way, a free demo for an otherwise niche game is always good—you can see if you like it risk-free and may well discover a delightful genre you didn't previously know about.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.