PC Building Simulator – Review

 
A review by Tim Turner
Ever fancied building your own PC but don’t know where to start? Worry no more! PC building simulator is here to help!
This new game from developer Claudiu Kiss and publisher The Irregular Corporation gives you the opportunity to build a PC from scratch right through to benchmarking.

The free build mode has all parts unlocked allowing you to build the PC of your dreams with hundreds of real-world parts from a number of manufacturers. Start with the case and add all the parts you want including fancy RBG lighting and coloured cabling. Go wild and create that dream rig you always wanted but will never afford!
For those that have no experience in building a PC then there is a tutorial which walks you through the process showing you which parts are needed and in what order to install them. The tutorial is very basic but will give you the knowledge needed to get started on your PC building journey.

Want to run your own PC repair business? Now you can with Career mode! Your uncle leaves you his pc repair business and leaves town taking money for fuel. Starting with $-15 you need to run the business repairing and building PCs for the customers who email you. There are many different job types ranging from cleaning out dust right through to building top of the range gaming rigs. Be careful though because some customers will want more than they are willing to pay for. Jobs can be rejected and don’t be afraid to do so if they will result in you losing money. I even got a scammer trying to get a free PC built for a Prince that was being held at the airport!! Not on my watch sonny Jim!! Make sure you keep an eye on when the rent and bills are due or you might go overdrawn. Go over $3000 overdrawn and you won’t be able to continue with that game save.

I have played the game for around 15 hours so far and I am really enjoying it. I quickly got bored of the same four music tracks playing in the background but noticed a music player program on the workshop computer in the game. This player allows you to access music files on your own PC or choose from lots of internet radio stations. What a great addition to a game! The devs have done well on that one.
After a couple of hours playing the career mode, I was getting fed up of connecting the cables every time I needed to turn on a PC. It is really fiddly as it is in real life so I suppose I can’t complain about that. Oh, what’s this in the tools section in the online shop? It’s a cable auto connect tool!!!! Wow, devs you really have thought of everything! There are actually a few auto connect tools for different parts saving you valuable time when completing your repairs. Be sure to unlock the extra work benches and PC storage cupboard when they become available. You will need the space as running the benchmarking software can take time and having multiple workstations means you can have 3 on the go at once. The storage cupboard allows you to see every part installed in the PCs stored in there which is really handy!
The graphics are nice and clean and not massively demanding. On my gaming rig, I was able to set the graphics on the highest setting and experienced no issues with an NVidia GTX750Ti GPU. My laptop with integral HD graphics was able to run the game on medium settings which were a pleasant surprise as it is stated that integrated graphics are not supported.
Overall I think this game is great! I would recommend it to anyone who has thought about building a PC or would like to learn. I would also recommend it to schools as it would be a great learning tool for children to give them knowledge of the hardware involved in computers, which is often overlooked in education, with the focus being more on use of the software. The only negatives I can find is that the repair jobs in career mode can be a bit repetitive but I guess this is true to life as most problems with computers stem from broken parts! Also, there isn’t much information about how different parts affect the benchmarking performance within the game, but a quick look on the community page on steam revealed that some friendly players have gone to the trouble of creating spreadsheets giving you said information. Big thanks to you guys!
15 hours in and I’m still really enjoying playing so at only £15 for the game it is really good value for money! Where can you be entertained for £1 an hour these days? I will look forward to new parts being added and if I can suggest anything it would be to allow expansion of the business in career mode. It would be great to be able to get a bigger shop or hire NPCs to take some of the workloads and maybe even expand the business to include an internet café to generate constant income.
All in all, I would give the game a very solid 8/10 and I would like to thank the devs for putting so much thought into their game. Well done!
 

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