Titans of Industry

I dug Titans of Industry out from deep on the shelf of shame and, honestly, felt that I owed it a second look. It seems clearly underrated by its BGG score, much like Ore: the Mining Game. Perhaps it simply arrived in an era with little patience for “dry” production games without unnecessary embellishments.

Its core is simple and clean: we buy factories that produce raw materials and industries that process them. Those raw materials become either money or victory points, so the whole experience revolves around building a production chain that works for me.

The nice part is that I am not playing sealed inside my own little industrial kingdom. I can use other players’ buildings, giving them a small bonus, and that keeps everyone connected to the table. It is not especially complex, but this small interdependence adds enough interest without weighing down the flow.

Its greatest strength, for me, is what it looks like with six players: it plays well, moves relatively quickly, and has very little downtime—an unusual thing for an economic game. It does not try to reinvent the genre; it simply delivers an honest, pleasant evening of producing and selling goods. And, in the end, we had a very good time with it.