Mad Television Tycoon

I wanted to love this game, I have nearly 200 hours on MGT2 and I was hoping this game would be similar in the sense that I could start out with a small channel and grow it to a media empire. I just can't get into it. I was expecting Mad Tower Mixed with Mad Games Tycoon 2. Somehow it's neither and not a lot of fun.

I don't really want to leave a negative review, but I don't see any point in lying to myself. Originally, I played Empire TV Tycoon (hereafter ETT), which I really enjoyed. I expected the same from MTT, but unfortunately, the game turned out to be less interesting. MTT has a very vertical gameplay structure, but it lacks the horizontal depth. What I mean is that in ETT, you had a fairly wide range of strategies. You could hire specialists who affected different aspects of your game: someone could let you produce your own movies, someone could boost your audience, someone could improve advertising rewards, and someone else could reduce the risk of getting penalized for pirated movies. The target audience system was also an interesting strategic choice. In MTT, however, there’s basically only one path: hope you find a better movie or advertisement before everyone else, grab it first, and complete the objective. That’s it. There is progression, but it’s purely linear—you do everything correctly, unlock stronger tools, and continue along the same path until the end of the game. That said, MTT does have a couple of significant advantages. First, and obviously the most important one, is online multiplayer. That’s actually the main reason I bought the game in the first place—I wanted to play it with my friends. And graphically, of course, MTT looks much better than ETT.

Wer das alte MAD TV mochte wird den Kauf nicht bereuen. Gibt noch paar Sachen zu verbessern aber der alte Spielspaß ist schon wieder da, mit einigen Erweiterungen.

No real updates since it came out, its a bit of a lazy ai mess at the moment with a few changes to the original formula but nothing exciting. Have been waiting on updates but only small bug fixes have come since april. Might be a good Mad TV game in a few years but for now its a hard miss

Als alter Mad TV Enthusiast, liebe ich dieses Spiel jetzt schon und kann es kaum erwarten bis die noch fehlenden Features veröffentlicht werden. Was jedoch negativ auffällt ist, das das System so unter Last steht als würde ich einen 3D-Action Shooter ala Battlefield spielen. Nach der ersten langen Session stürzte mein Rechner ab mit der Meldung zu heißer CPU. Nachdem ich fairerweise die Lüfter gereinigt habe, läuft es jetzt aber immer mit vollen Lüftern. Spiel aus, Lüfter aus. Würde mich freuen, wenn diese Thematik vom Entwickler geprüft wird.

Tolles Spiel mit Suchtgefahr für die ersten Tage! Habe MadTV früher auf meinem 386er geliebt (bin Jahrgang 80 😊). Wem es genauso ging, kann hier bedenkenlos zuschlagen und in Nostalgie schwelgen! Mad Television Tycoon ist fast genauso — nur ohne Betty (bis jetzt??? Das Spiel ist ja noch im Early Access!).

After 30 hours with Mad Television Tycoon, I think I can finally give it a fair assessment. I went into this with very few expectations. The concept looked interesting, €21 felt like a reasonable price for an Early Access indie title, and I generally enjoy management games. What I found was a management sim with a solid core that still has room to grow. The programming loop is the game's biggest strength. Different genres and programme formats perform better or worse depending on the time of day, so simply buying the highest-rated shows isn't enough. Building a schedule that balances audience numbers, advertising contracts, viewer fatigue and programme availability is genuinely enjoyable. The TV market is another highlight. Buying films and series, deciding when to invest, and taking advantage of "hot" or "classic" programmes creates interesting decisions. I also like the news system: news stories lose value over time, can be combined into stronger broadcasts, and the headlines themselves often made me smile. The parody titles for films and series ("Citizen Cane", "The Shinning", "Billion Dollar Baby", etc.) add a surprising amount of charm. There are plenty of mechanics to juggle—genre trends, viewer fatigue, random events, advertising, competitors—and while the tutorials are brief, I never felt overwhelmed. That said, there are areas I'd like to see expanded. The randomized starting catalogue has a larger influence on the opening week than I'd like. You begin with only three series and three films, and differences in episode count, programme quality and film length can create noticeably different starts. A 12-episode series gives far more flexibility than a 4-episode one, while longer films become less attractive because the viewer-fatigue mechanic penalizes consecutive hours of the same programme type. I restarted several times simply because some openings felt much stronger than others. Some mechanics could also use more explanation. I still don't fully understand how programme rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare) affects performance, so part of the game became trial and error. A few systems also feel unfinished: renting versus buying films could be differentiated more clearly; film value recovery feels overly linear; advertising is fun, but I'd love to see long-term contracts, exclusive advertisers or even shareholders to add another strategic layer; loans can currently be abused by borrowing money during the day and repaying it before midnight without any real cost. The good news is that this is exactly the kind of feedback I'd expect to give an Early Access game—not because it's broken, but because the foundations are already there. In my 30 hours I haven't encountered any game-breaking bugs. Most of my criticism is about balance and expanding mechanics rather than stability. I've also already seen quality-of-life improvements arrive through updates, so development appears active. If you're looking for a polished, feature-complete management game, you may want to wait. If, however, you enjoy management sims and don't mind an Early Access title that's still evolving, I think there's already enough here to justify the current price.

I like it. I'm excited for more features to be added to help build up more of the mid and late game. Really hoping the AI vomit is replaced with something real and human created so I don't have to manually replace all of them. I'm sure mods are available. I just can't recommend it if that element is expected to remain at release. I'm sure the balance will be a constant tweak. If they're previous work is any indication it doesn't look like they plan on dumping this at release. So far so good.