Management games

Management games

This label sounds more serious than the shelf really is. There are three games under it, and the idea meant to tie them together is that you run a whole system with several things moving at once, rather than steering a single character. That idea holds for two of the three. The third borrows the label from elsewhere, and we will tell you plainly which is which.

Two games where you run the whole board

Traffic Command lays out a seaside town seen at an angle, with junctions whose lights you toggle between red and green. The job is to send enough cars through to meet a quota without letting any collide in the crossing, under a countdown and with three hearts, so one crash warns rather than ends. The game lives in the decision of which side to release first. Kingdom Defense is a castle-defence game where you fire a bow to stop waves of skeletons reaching the gate. Both share the same shape: you read the whole scene from above or from the side and decide what to deal with first.

One game that is really a shooter

Grand Commander carries this label too, but on opening it we found a sideways shooter. A gun-toting character runs across red Martian ground with a health bar, a life counter, a clock and special-power buttons to tap. It hands you nothing to manage — it hands you a target to aim at, exactly like the titles on the shooting shelf. We do not strip the label the source applied, but we flag it here so you do not expect the wrong thing.

A small shelf we do not inflate

Three games is all that genuinely sits under this label. We do not fold in other strategy titles to pad the number. If you want something with more to manage, cross over to the strategy shelf, which is larger and holds several defence games.

Common questions about the management shelf

Traffic lights or castle defence — which is easier to grasp?

The traffic-light game is easier in the first minute, because there is only one thing to press: the lights. The castle-defence game gives you more to juggle at once, so it takes a little longer to settle into.

Why is Grand Commander here if it is a shooter?

Because the source data tagged it as management from the start. We report what the screen shows — that it plays as a shooter — without deleting the label it arrived with, which is why you see it on both this shelf and the shooting shelf.

Is there a build-your-own-city game on this shelf?

Not yet. All three control something the game has already built, rather than letting you lay out a city yourself. If the catalogue gains that kind of game later, this page will update to match.