The player starts small with either a lemon stand (Capitalist) or a potato farm (Communist). With enough clicks, players succeed in the system. In Capitalist, players expand to newspaper stands, car washes, and eventually to oil companies. In Communist, players go from potato farms to land grabs all the way to medicine production.
I’m an American citizen who studied abroad in Russia, so both systems are near and dear to me. Ultimately, AdVenture Capitalist is more fun than AdVenture Communist.
AdVenture Capitalist Has Clearer Goals
Both games are ultimately about accumulation. When is it never about accumulation though? That’s the point of idle games: they sit idly running in the background accruing iron ore, money, comrades, whatever the case may be. But, to me, the goal of all that accumulation was much more defined in Capitalist than Communist.
Communist doesn’t have currency. Instead, everything the player accumulates is used to purchase the other things you can accumulate. For example, the player starts with potatoes and potato farmers. Potatoes are needed to purchase workers for the land, miners for the iron ore, soldiers for the weapons etc. For the nurses and medicine, players need potatoes as well as farmers, workers, miners, and soldiers. Essentially, I felt like I was increasing my stock for the sake of it in Communist. But, now I know why the pharmaceutical industry is so messed up: not enough potatoes.
In Capitalist, increasing my wealth enabled me to purchase upgrades or increase the number of donut shops or shrimp boats that I had. At one point, I had 10 times more Jenny’s than Forrest Gump! I liked being able to more easily plan my next purchase in Capitalist (thanks to a universal currency rather than a quasi-bartering system), which I felt like I couldn’t do in Communist.
AdVenture Communist Had Some Good Points Too
Although I prefer Capitalist, there were some aspects to Communist that I really liked. I thought that Communist had better graphics and presentation. I loved that each resource was split into tabs versus all on one screen. I also liked that your comrade had a different smiling picture for each resource. It made the game a little less bland. Potatoes can be pretty bland.
At first, I thought Communist also had way more achievements to unlock than Capitalist, and that appealed to me as an achievement hunter. However, that’s not the case. Capitalist has more than 600 achievements and more than 600 upgrades, while Communist only has 90 medals, 775 unlocks and 18 experiment upgrades. Perhaps it looked like more because there’s more variety in Communist’s achievements than Capitalist’s. Capitalist’s achievements simply increase the amount of money you make.
Communist is still in Early Access, so there is room for it to improve. One of my biggest complaints about the game right now is that it’s way too grindy. The jumps between achievements are enormous. Players receive a bronze medal for having 1000 potato farmers. Great. The silver medal? 1E+20 potato farmers, or 100 pentillion farmers. I read those words and imagine Dr. Evil saying them, because that number is evil.
I’m not only nowhere close to that but reaching 100 pentillion farmers is made harder by the fact that players have to spend farmers to buy nurses. I do hope Hyper Hippo Games makes changes to the reward system as they continue to work on the game.
Both games are available on mobile, and I think they make better mobile games than desktop games. Since a big part of playing either title is a “set it and forget it” attitude, they’re great for casual players who want something they can open up every once in a while and make a few moves. The nature of mobile platforms does remove much of the grind because it then happens off screen. Overall, they’re neat games, and where else will you be able to have 30 movie studios or 100 pentillion potato farmers?
AdVenture Capitalist is free to play on Steam, Android and iPhone.
AdVenture Communist is free to play on Steam and Android.
