Through years of irresistible game bundles and enticing steam sales, my digital library has grown into a vast treasure trove of unplayed games, each waiting for its turn in the spotlight. And on my journey to complete these 2000+ unplayed gems, I stumbled across the 2016 oil-drilling simulator Turmoil.
And honestly, if I'd known digging for oil was this much fun I’d have followed a different career path a long time ago.
I was instantly impressed by how Turmoil seamlessly integrated its mechanics, making them interdependent and essential for the player's experience. You can search for oil using dowsing rods, moles and a ground scanner. Rigs pump oil you've found out of the ground that can be stored into tanks. You extend and branch out pipes connecting oil deposits up to the surface. And you buy wagons to transport oil to sell points at the edges of the map. Forget even one of these steps and your work comes crashing to a hault.
And while each mechanic is required to move forwards, not all mechanics are as effective as each other at all times.
Sale prices fluctuate so you must strategically decide when to sell. Prices don't stay up high for long so when they are, you want to move oil fast. More carts, bigger pipes, and more oil makes for bigger profits in thise moments.
When prices drop you want to stockpile oil so you can sell it faster when prices come back up. But stockpile too much without enough money to suppluly the wagons needed to move all that oil and you might find yourself with a lot of tanks of oil and not much money. Everything on it's own is quite simple. But together is where its complexity and puzzle like approach shine.
Another layer of difficulty comes in through its procedural maps. Oil always comes in different shapes, sizes and places. As well as you never know where oil will be. And on top of that, you can only start each dig site with $2000, leaving the rest of your money back in town. So when you're back in town you need to decide how to spend your money. Do you get upgrades to help make more money? Do you bid more in order to get better land? It's important to remember that some plots will have more oil in its ground. And if you bid high on plots, does that mean you can't bid well for shares? Because by the end of the game, you need the highest percentage of shares to win. But if you get good ploys and shares, does that matter if you don't get good land and can't make as much money and end up falling behind on upgrades?
Plus if you think this sounds good already, what if I told you there was also multiplayer that works really well.
Singleplayer already starts out with a simulated multiplayer experience where you and 3 NPC’s have arrived in town to make it rich in the 19th century America oil rush. You spend your time bidding against the NPC’s for plots of land as well as participate against them in a reverse auction to buy town shares. (The shares start at the max price and keeps going down until someone purchases it.)
And then in Multiplayer, everything works the exact same way except everyone submits their bids anonymously and only once. Then the highest bid wins. It’s done this way for both land and shares. Which would almost be nice if it was done like this for single player too. it's so much faster and efficient.
In the midst of the game, every level feels both too short and too long. Too short because you just want it to keep going and too long because you can't wait to head back and spend all the money you've just made.
I came into Turmoil expecting it would be relatively short, feel like a mobile/flash game and be a one and done kind of experience. But with its multiplayer and procedural land plots, It's become a fresh and replayable game I can't wait to come back to and share with friends.
If you're a fan of simulation, strategy or management games then this is something you will want to try out for yourself. And also something to try if you enjoy short unique indie games.
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