Startup Company

About

Startup Company is a single player casual management game with economy and business themes. It was developed by Hovgaard Games and was released on April 10, 2020. It received positive reviews from players.

Startup Company is a business simulation sandbox game where you’re the CEO of a new company. Your job is to build your very own website and compete against the largest tech giants on the planet!

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81%

Audience ScoreBased on 3,086 reviews

gameplay80 positive mentions

grinding90 negative mentions

Engaging and addictive gameplay with a satisfying learning curve and resource management.
Active and responsive developer with frequent updates and good modding support.
Realistic and detailed simulation aspects including employee management, server hosting, marketing, and investing.

Repetitive and grind-heavy especially in the mid to late game with excessive micromanagement required.
Interface and UI are often clunky, unintuitive, and require excessive clicking and menu navigation.
Game feels unpolished with bugs like save file issues, missing autosave, and lack of late-game content and challenges.

gameplay
318 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
66%
9%
The gameplay offers an accessible and engaging management simulation with a solid core loop that captivates players initially, featuring employee management, product development, and market competition. However, many users find it becomes repetitive, grind-heavy, and lacking depth or variation in the mid- to late-game, with some mechanics feeling overly simplified or underexplained. While modding and future updates show promise, the current experience may struggle to maintain long-term interest for players seeking deeper or more dynamic gameplay.
- “The game's core mechanics revolve around creating products, hiring and managing employees, and competing in a simulated market. The management aspects, from balancing budgets to setting up marketing campaigns, add depth and strategy to the gameplay.”
- “The basic gameplay loop can definitely get you hooked for a while, there's variety to what you're doing and with the concept of an exponentially growing startup, you often feel like you're making good progress.”
- “Startup Company has outdone its competitors tenfold with its easy-to-learn UI and gameplay mechanics, providing extraordinary yet subtle depth and challenge. It is up there as one of my top games!”
- “The core design is straightforward but becomes repetitive quickly, the controls feel clunky, and several mechanics come across as unnecessarily complicated for such a simple gameplay loop.”
- “The gameplay boils down to headhunt staff, wait, recruit staff, buy a desk, wait, recruit another staff, buy a desk, wait, start making "parts", wait, wait, wait, wait, select a feature for your software, wait, wait, wait, upgrade the feature, wait, wait, wait, get bored and hire more staff, eventually reach the arbitrary limit on staff, wait, wait, wait..... you get the point.”
- “Major hurdle for me the R&D aspect of the gameplay which is kind of boring, repetitive and consumes quite some time.”
graphics
109 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
58%
4%
The graphics in the game are generally described as simple, clean, and aesthetically pleasing with a charming, colorful, and polished art style that fits the genre well. While not highly detailed or advanced—sometimes called basic or minimalistic—they are praised for being accessible on modest hardware and complementing the gameplay effectively. Some critiques note a lack of animation or personality, but overall the visuals are considered adequate and enjoyable without overshadowing the game’s core mechanics.
- “I also love the art style, beautifully coloured and detailed in that classically animated style.”
- “The colorful and vibrant graphics add to the game's overall charm, while the upbeat soundtrack keeps players energized and engaged.”
- “Startup company has the fancier interface and graphic - it is simpler to click through the different windows and everything looks nicer than in software inc.”
- “Some downsides of this game are that the graphics aren't that good.”
- “But yet I can't run this game without extreme lag and slideshow framerates when it doesn't even have a way to adjust graphics.”
- “Devs just updated to beta19, very cool stuff... unfortunately they have now made the game unplayable for anything sharing a graphics card as they specifically mention players need to make sure to play on a system with a dedicated graphics card.”
grinding
96 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
3%
3%
94%
Grinding is a major criticism, with many users finding the game increasingly tedious and repetitive after the initial hours, especially in mid to late stages. The gameplay often involves excessive micromanagement and slow progression with limited quality-of-life features, leading to frustration and boredom. While some enjoy the early engaging pace, the overall grind can feel overwhelming and dull, requiring significant time investment with limited rewarding content.
- “You'll need a second life for grinding.”
- “You'll need a second life for grinding.”
- “You'll need a second life for grinding.”
- “Mid to endgame is very grindy and very time consuming, not worth finishing past the 5 million users / 80 employees because the game is just a massive hiring, training, and upgrading grind with zero new mechanics introduced and absolutely zero challenge.”
- “Overly grindy game that wants you to micromanage your micromanagers early game, then the game is essentially just a desktop background late game.”
- “The main game loop is extremely boring because there are limited options, and the options are locked behind super grindy research barriers.”
monetization
91 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
3%
6%
91%
Monetization in the game revolves almost exclusively around managing and optimizing advertisements, which becomes repetitive and limiting over time as ads are the sole income source regardless of chosen website type. Early gameplay is engaging with varied tasks, but late-game reduces to micro-managing ad contracts, balancing user satisfaction, and scaling ads for revenue, leading to a monotonous cycle with little strategic depth or alternative monetization options. While some appreciate the realistic ad management simulation and employee hiring depth, many criticize the lack of variety and challenges, suggesting it feels more like a tedious task than a dynamic business simulation.
- “The haggle between features and monetization is a nice concept.”
- “Decent variety of website features, enhancements, and monetization methods.”
- “Your employees build out components and modules that are used to add features to your site, develop monetization, or used in other components and modules.”
- “In startup company, you run a website company but the only source of income possible is advertisement.”
- “Basically, no matter what product you choose or what features you use, all you have to do is keep the feature levels the same and not have too many negative features (ads), then throw money at advertising, website will grow quick, then sell it, profit a few millions, rinse, lather, repeat.”
- “At the mid-end, around where you enter top 10 companies, playing the game further is just a repeated boring process: increase advertisement, get more users, increase server capacity.”
story
50 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
8%
80%
12%
The game lacks a traditional or engaging story, focusing primarily on gameplay and simulation of running a tech startup without narrative depth or character development. Some players appreciate the freedom to create their own experience and the added retirement feature as a form of endgame goal, but overall it is seen as minimalistic and less immersive compared to similar titles like Game Dev Story.
- “Even though this is a very simple game, I ended up quite liking it and have completed a full story campaign.”
- “One recent addition I liked is that they recently added a retirement part, like in the old Sid Meier game "Pirates", that tells the story of how your life would be when you retired, just text, but still an endgame goal to work towards.”
- “A startup starts with innovation and convincing co-founders, employees, customers, investors, and the rest of the world that your company, its team, and its mission has a future.”
- “I have never been able to finish the story mode.”
- “There's no story, you're just a guy who wanted to open his own business, and you have about 60 years to develop it, until you grow old.”
- “This is kinda a small thing that makes me kinda sad, the employees that you have have no interactions and no back story on what's going on; as a CEO you should have the connection with your employees.”
music
39 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
26%
56%
18%
The music in the game is generally described as calm, relaxing, and pleasant, contributing positively to the overall atmosphere. However, most users note that the soundtrack is limited to a few repetitive tracks, which can become monotonous or irritating over extended play sessions. Despite this, the simple and soothing nature of the music helps prevent it from being overly annoying.
- “The colorful and vibrant graphics add to the game's overall charm, while the upbeat soundtrack keeps players energized and engaged.”
- “The visual aesthetic is beautiful, music is perfect, and gameplay is both addictive and realistic, this could be a trainer game for how to handle yourself as a new startup!”
- “The positives of this game include the clean artstyle, lack of bugs (no crashes!), good soundtrack and the concept of developing your start-up website.”
- “The game does offer soundtracks, but in the end, it repeats the same soundtrack over and over again, which irritated me.”
- “Just like there are only about 2 or 3 pieces of background music, which gets annoying quite quickly.”
- “There is only one music track, which can be repetitive after some time.”
optimization
37 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
22%
70%
8%
The game's optimization is mixed, with many users reporting performance slowdowns and lag, especially in late-game or high-worker scenarios, and UI scaling issues on high-resolution monitors. However, some praise its ability to run on low-end machines and note steady improvements through updates. Overall, while the gameplay mechanics related to optimization are engaging, technical performance and content depth still need refinement.
- “If you enjoy optimization and the idea of making numbers go big, then this does those things really, really well.”
- “You're able to rent a server room/old warehouse and configure your own servers with a very fitting system of database, web, and cache whereby you'll need to find the right balance between all of them in order to gain the best possible performance.”
- “At release this simulated management strategy title had a few performance issues and some game breaking bugs; thankfully, the developers have been releasing regular updates and not only is the game now stable and performing well, but it is extremely well fleshed out, cleverly implemented, and full of content.”
- “Extreme lag with an extremely unoptimized game.”
- “The game's performance felt very sluggish.”
- “Only downside, performance gets kind of slow when you max out your workers.”
replayability
33 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
24%
58%
18%
The game offers mixed replayability: while some players find value in starting new games and exploring different strategies, many feel the experience becomes repetitive quickly with limited paths to success. Updates and varied gameplay elements add some replay value, but overall, the content and diversity currently restrict long-term engagement for many users.
- “To earn the core achievements, you often have to start a new game, which is great for replay value.”
- “With its engaging gameplay, attention to detail, and high replayability, this game is sure to provide countless hours of entertainment and education.”
- “I highly recommend this game if you want a replayable business game that has plenty of depth for hours of fun gameplay.”
- “Replay value is where this game hits a major problem.”
- “Once you understand the mechanics of getting to a profit, the replayability of the game tanked for me as I realized there literally is one (or maybe two) paths of getting there.”
- “Replayability is nearly nil, as every new game you start, you end up doing the same thing over and over.”
stability
28 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
21%
8%
71%
The game's stability is mixed, with some users experiencing occasional freezes, bugs, and glitches—especially during specific actions or early gameplay—while others report smooth performance with no crashes. Despite some issues, the developer is actively updating the game, making it one of the more polished early-access titles. Overall, stability improves after the tutorial and with updates, but occasional bugs and freezes still affect the experience for some players.
- “Great game for passing time, creator is on top of keeping the game up-to-date and bug free.”
- “This has to be one of the most polished bug free games I've ever played being it just released.”
- “No glitches or crashes.”
- “Sometimes if you hold Ctrl while double-clicking the name of a new management plan, the game freezes and you have to close and reopen it to be able to do anything, which sets you back to your last save.”
- “The game freezes a lot and needs to be fixed.”
- “This might be a personal problem or a bug in the game but the game freezes every 15 seconds for about 5-10 seconds and then catches up with itself.”
humor
23 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is lighthearted, quirky, and often derives from parody, social commentary, and amusing company or competitor names. While some find it genuinely funny and relatable, others feel it lacks the consistent comedic charm of classic simulation games like Theme Hospital. Overall, the humor adds an enjoyable and sometimes crude layer that complements the gameplay without becoming repetitive.
- “Lighthearted sense of humor, parody, social commentary.”
- “And boy do I love the hilarious company names xd.”
- “(It's also hilarious when you do fire people and everyone but one guy is upset. That one guy is like 'I hated that dev!' haha).”
atmosphere
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
34%
33%
The atmosphere in the game receives mixed feedback, with praise for its polish and concept but criticism for being repetitive, simple, and somewhat passive. While some find the office and company environment engaging, others feel it lacks depth and could benefit from more unique and dynamic elements to enhance immersion.
- “Amazing that this is a one-man product, it is so well polished and with a great atmosphere.”
- “Great game with a nice atmosphere.”
- “A startup company is a good idea for a game; micromanage the atmosphere of your company, build your team, and live for the next contract.”
- “Repetitive, simple design without atmosphere, not fun overall.”
- “The office atmosphere is kind of mundane.”
- “I don't like the passive atmosphere in this startup company game.”
emotional
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The emotional experience of the game is mixed, with some players finding it stressful and unrewarding, while others develop a strong attachment to their creations and appreciate its relaxing simplicity. Overall, it evokes both frustration and sentimental engagement depending on the player's perspective.
- “Made me cry after the bank wanted the money back.”
- “You develop an emotional attachment to the software you make.”
- “Less features in the game due to lack of development rather made me feel relaxed and easy to play the game.”