When I first reviewed Drill Deal: Oil Tycoon on the Nintendo Switch, the final verdict was unfavorable. One of my closing remarks was to play this game on a different platform if you were interested. That, of course, only left you with one other option, and that was to play it on a PC.

Developer A2 Softworks have decided to expand on this by putting their money where their mouth is, and they’ve enlisted the help of Ultimate Games S.A. to publish Drill Deal: Oil Tycoon on the Xbox. Being given the opportunity to review this game again has me both dubious and intrigued.

Dubious as to what was offered before was terribly presented and could be just a reserving of the same technical issues. I am intrigued, however, as to if switching publishers will fix everything into a more enjoyable experience.

My Drill Deal: Oil Tycoon review on the Switch can be found HERE if you want to read the full review. As nothing will change fundamentally, this review will focus on addressing the technical flaws and discussing any improvements made from that original review.

So first let’s list the issues I’ll be discussing.

• Inadequate tutorial.
• Difficult control navigation.
• Window clutter, highlights, and popups.
• Fast forwarding causes crashes.
• Crashes wiping progress.
• Graphical ship and water movement.
• Repetitive sounds and music.

There is no change to the tutorial. It remains extensive towards the fundamentals, providing tasks to complete and informative of other features, but it lacks examples.

Navigation control has been smoothed out considerably. No longer are you having to drive in and out of the radial wheel continuously to make choices then re-enter the radial wheel to confirm those choices. With the occasional glitch when making choices, escaping out is easy and doesn’t wipe your decisions, allowing you to re-enter and continue without hassle.

The window clutter and popups persist, but they too have been fixed, so if they do take precedence, they are easily accepted or escapable so as to not wipe any decisions you are making in other windows. As for the window highlighting issue, it has been fixed.

Fast forwarding the game causing crashes and those crashes wiping progress have also been fixed.

There is no change to the graphics of the voxel art ships and the water. The ships still get swallowed up by the water instead of bobbing along. However, one improvement that has been made is the change in some of the colours. The colouring has now been made more distinctive making it easy to place buildings on your oil rig.

Lastly, the sounds and music remain nauseatingly repetitive. So again, like before, turning them down or off to save your sanity is recommended.

The other improvement is a common staple nowadays; the addition of achievements. These add a nice additional task to complete if you desire. None of the achievements are hard and only some require repeating some levels to complete. Approximately 20 hours is what you will need to unlock all of them.

Drill Deal: Oil Tycoon on the Xbox is a much more pleasurable experience. Although it still has non-innovative gameplay in this serving, I can say it is an upgrade from Clag Paste on toast to a warm bowl of porridge. If the base building business simulator is what you are looking for, then you are going to get exactly what you’re looking for here.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove