Turmoil from Gamious and Playdigious is a tongue-in-cheek type of game that places you in the role of an oil tycoon in the works back in the 19th century. Learn more in our Turmoil review!
In Turmoil from GamiousGamious and Playdigious, you will be playing through an oil tycoon sim set in the 19th century as you try to become the biggest oil entrepreneur ever. The better you do in your business, the more the town will grow alongside your business. You’ll have to gain the rights to each piece of land, search for oil, and use the right tools to build a network that will allow you to take oil from point A to point B, pipes and all,
You can either take on a single game of Turmoil, which is a shorter experience that lasts a single in-game year, or you can decide to start a whole new campaign. You’ll have to pick your character from the different available options. There’s Daisy, a hard-working woman who is not one to dilly-dally; Joshua, a rancher who is ready for a chance of pace by entering the oil business; Ricardo, a ship captain – who doesn’t know how to swim – who has sailed around the world, and is ready for a new adventure; and Blanche, a Lawyer who is bored of her life and has caught oil fever, and the only cure is finding all of the oil!
In Turmoil, you can move a cursor around the screen with the left analog stick, interacting with things and confirming your choices with the A button. The D-Pad can be used to access the different tools at your disposal, which are also displayed at the top of the screen. By pressing up on the D-Pad, you can access the latest one, and you can press down to exit items navigation. If you need to get a closer look at things, you can zoom in by pressing down on the right analog stick. You can also control everything by using the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen (perhaps on an Animal Crossing: New Horizons model?) when you play in Portable or Tabletop Mode, or if you’re rocking a Nintendo Switch Lite.
You will be greeted by the town’s Mayor as you start your adventure to become an oil tycoon, who will walk you through the basics of Turmoil so that you can quickly get going. The first step will be to click on the wagon on the side of the screen so that you can travel to the first oil mining operation in the game. Before you can drill for oil, you will have to find it, so you can hire a dowser, who will use a dowsing rod to find a potential spot for you to drill. Once the oil has been found, it will be time to buy an oiling rig to dig deep into the ground until you find an oil deposit. The longer you drill, the more expensive it will be!
Once you strike oil, you will need to hire a horse wagon to collect the oil, so that it can be unloaded at the deposit. Every time a delivery is made, you’ll earn money depending on the base payment. Once you’ve drilled a hole in the ground and found an oil reserve, your pipes will pump it up at a steady pace for the wagon to collect it. You’ll, later on, have to upgrade pipes to make them more efficient, upgrading all pipes in a network since the oil will travel only as fast as it’s allowed by the narrowest pipe in the whole chain.
The first piece of land you will get in Turmoil will be on the house, but later on, you’ll have to make good use of your budget to outbid your competitors/rivals so that you can get the best spots possible to pump up that glorious black oil non-stop. You’ll start with $20,000 on your account at the local bank, and can end up borrowing some extra money for upgrades as needed so that you can outsmart other entrepreneurs. You’ll need to make the most of the different cash bonuses you can get for getting all the oil in a piece of land, for selling all of the oil, and for withdrawing early from the land, so that you can use that extra money for upgrades or to repay loans.
Turmoil on the Nintendo Switch includes the base game as well as the DLC, which is called “The Heat Is On.” In this DLC, you can take on an all-new campaign, a new town, new areas to explore for oil, new resources, new drilling mechanisms, new treasures to find, new people to meet… did I mention it has new stuff in it? It’s a big chunk of extra stuff for the game, and you can access it right from the start of your run – although I do suggest that you first give the base game a go so that you don’t go into the DLC without any knowledge of how the game works!
Turmoil on the Nintendo Switch is a very fun and highly addictive oil tycoon sim with plenty of content to offer, a solid presentation, and easy to understand gameplay mechanics. The base game is great on its own, but when you add the game’s The Heat Is On DLC to the package, it makes this a must-have game. Turmoil is out now on the Nintendo Switch for a low $14.99.
Disclaimer
This Turmoil review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Playdigious.
