12 best management and tycoon games on Android in 2024 (2024)

If you own a smartphone, you understand the perks of using it to coordinate projects and deadlines. Keeping track of data is easy with the latest budget Android phones. And if you're a practitioner of good business practices, then tycoon games might be up your alley. Tycoon games exploit the fun aspects of running a business by isolating the core elements of growth and resource management. The best part of these apps is how well these elements get incorporated into any type of game — in which you will find a mix of titles that embrace this concept, including addictive match-3 apps and soulslikes. To help you ignite your passion for tycoon and management games, we've compiled our favorites designed to make you feel like a boss wherever you go.

What qualifies as a management or tycoon game?

A fairly loose definition defines management and tycoon games, but they generally revolve around placing you in charge of a business, with a simple gameplay loop where collecting currency can grow your size and assets. Idle mechanics allow some management and tycoon games to generate currency without any input and can develop on their own; employing cooldowns to incentivize putting them down for a while. Management and tycoon games are designed to be long-term pet projects, granting the satisfaction of watching something start small and develop over time.

1 Fallout Shelter

Fallout Shelter is a literal base management sim based on the famous Bethesda property. You are placed in charge of a vault beneath the surface of the Earth after a post-nuclear war and are tasked with making it the best possible living space for those who dwell within. Dwellers can be fully customized and assigned different roles to complete tasks that improve the vault's facilities. There's even a mechanic that allows you to make dwellers "repopulate," creating even more dwellers for additional jobs (no idea where they came from).

Dwellers can also be sent out into the wasteland to search for weapons, armor, and supplies useful for defending themselves. The game's aesthetic is pretty cool; it has that jaunty commercial look for the sprites and a variety of styles for indoor decoration. A superior choice if you like a more thematic experience with solid gameplay to back it up.

2 Game Dev Story

Well, this is about as meta as it gets; Game Dev Story puts you in charge of your own video game development company. Duties include what you might expect, hiring and firing employees of varying skills, managing assets, and maximizing the appeal of your brand to the public. Game development revolves around improving the skill and productivity of your developer workforce, which improves the game’s stats in turn. Realistically, game development grows in scope as your workforce grows in skill and number, and your office space will expand both its size and number of computers to accommodate the new employees. All in all, the game is relatively charming with its cute pixel art and expressive sprite animation and is worth playing.

3 Sim Companies

Sim Companies is a management simulation in which you control your own company, orchestrating the use of your assets and business dealings. You start with a few assets and build upon them in your preferred industry. There are multiple directions for you to progress; production, retail, and research, each offering unique benefits and drawbacks. The game draws on the weirdly useful skill of sensing good business opportunities and which pursuits to take or leave. This also relates to the game's virtual economy, where players implement their strategies for growth, requiring wise decision-making and foresight to stay ahead of the competition. It's a great time if you want to get the CEO experience without the off-putting complexities like the law or worker rights.

4 Farm Frenzy

And now, something completely different, Farm Frenzy, a farming sim that allows you to build up your own farming business via mini-games. Over an impressive variety of levels, the game demands the generation of assets from playing a collection of farming-themed mini-games, from gathering eggs to milking cows. Think farming in Minecraft, but a bit more frantic. The cash these mini-games generate can be used to construct institutions like bakeries and dairies, which earn even more money. It has the clicker game effect of getting you caught up in farming (no pun intended) and resources, which is simple but effective.

While there are some stability issues and a couple of balance problems, none are deal breakers, and you can still manage your farm as you see fit. Farm Frenzy is a cute game with a solid gameplay loop and a progression ladder that's easily engaging enough to keep you occupied for ages.

5 Project Highrise

A far more simple example of the management genre is Project Highrise, a game in which you construct a series of 2D skyscrapers for 2D characters to inhabit. Its gameplay is centered around the construction of skyscrapers, the facilities built within them, and the tenants that take up residence. Your goal is to keep the tenants happy with good quality of life and decent living conditions, both for those living in apartments and those running businesses of their own. Retail institutions like restaurants and stores can be included to increase your cash flow, which in turn creates opportunities for further upgrades.

As management sims go, this one’s more on the realistic side, as tenants must be kept happy and will leave if underserved. Despite its simple presentation, Project Highrise is pretty absorbing.

6 Egg, Inc.

Egg, Inc. is a business simulator that manufactures an amusing experience through simple means; it gives you control of an egg farm and places zero tariffs on the scale of growth. You start with a simple chicken coop, tasked with harvesting eggs and growing your livestock, expanding your farm, and researching ways to sell your product, all to excel to the furthest stars on a solid basis of egg-borne cash. The fluid animations make it very satisfying to watch your egg operation develop and expand, as well as watch a swarm of chickens flock around in a strangely mesmerizing amorphous swarm.

Egg, Inc. does resemble a clicker game, but a solid presentation and a quirky sense of humor make it well worth your time. Sometimes all you need is the commitment to an idea to make it special, even if that means blowing it up into a universe-spanning intergalactic chicken processing empire.

7 Mini Metro

Mini Metro is a management simulator revolving around developing a subway. Start with a simplistic diagram of colored train lines and improve their efficiency while new stations appear and commuter levels rise. You gain upgrades to assist with increased demand, from additional carriages to unique rail types. Adjust your experience with difficulty settings and shoot for in-game achievements if you like a challenge. Playing casually, you're looking at 27 hours of value - not bad by any means. Easy on the eyes, hard to put down, and pretty fleshed out for $1.09; Mini Metro is worth the trip.

8 Tiny Tower: 8 Bit Retro Tycoon

In Tiny Tower: 8 Bit Retro Tycoon, you are the superintendent of a developing skyscraper, governing the institutions and accommodations for the ever-increasing inhabitants. After a fairly comprehensive tutorial, you are free to build upward forever, punting cute pixel art inhabitants up and down in an elevator. Institutions like stores and restaurants can be invested in and improved, increasing profits for more floors. Given how tall the building can get, this is a good game for these excellent Android tablets' superior screen sizes. Tiny Tower: 8 Bit Retro Tycoon gets you into a routine, slowly but surely improving your business, satisfyingly. This also supports cloud saves, so there's no need to worry about losing your upward progress.

9 Hundred Days

Have you ever dreamed of owning a vineyard? Well, here's Hundred Days, a vineyard development and wine production simulator to satisfy your highly specific fantasy. You're placed in charge of a rural grape farm; tasked with growing this business via manufacturing by selling various kinds of wine.

Hundred Days goes a bit harder than the others on this list, with multiple spreadsheets for managing business opportunities, profit projections, and other admin stuff that tycoon games usually don't bother with, so it has niche appeal. This complex business sim gameplay is somewhat at odds with the laid-back tone of the game's countryside setting and calming music, but those who enjoy more complicated admin jobs in a tycoon game will appreciate the chilled-out atmosphere. Hundred Days looks lovely and has a strange, intangible calming effect, so it's a good choice for stressful times.

10 The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia, one of our favorite strategy games, puts you in charge of your own thriving kingdom with the task of growing its size, complexity, and destructive might in a limited amount of turns, defending yourself from a rival kingdom attempting to do the same. The user must harvest assets like lumber and wild game to train soldiers who can conquer other villages and become part of the empire. When two soldiers from rival kingdoms meet, it's a fight to the death with single-move turn-based combat. Moving up the tech tree and utilizing multiple avenues of progression increases your score, and the player with the highest score at the end wins.

Overall, the Battle of Polytopia provides the tense strategic qualities of chess while keeping things nice and laid back with its management and tycoon elements, making the matches exciting and satisfying.

11 Earth Inc.

Time to drop the pretenses and conquer the world. Earth Inc. is an idle tycoon game where you transform a small mining operation into a world-spanning company, even while eating, sleeping, or doing something else entirely. Gameplay includes various mini-games designed to generate profits, from hiring miners to improving the clicker mechanic efficiency to controlling deliveries. Your business expands as your workforce and capital growth, that is until you eventually run out of Earth to conquer and move onto other worlds. This is, bizarrely, the second game with an unassuming business that takes you to space, even weirder considering you start as a mining outfit.

In this iteration, Earth Inc. leans into the capitalism theme with its aspirations of endless growth and apathy towards environmental preservation, which can be a little repellant despite the obvious irony. But the unbridled enthusiasm the game has towards the idea of a hyper-capitalist company makes it hard not to get invested, helped along by the lovely pixel art and motivating music. Earth Inc. is worth a look for the sheer spectacle.

12 My Colony

My Colony is a civilization-building game about colonizing a hostile environment, with a focus on resource management, societal growth, and economic stability. The game begins with the player having very little to work with, creating a mandate to gather resources and transform their surrounding area with structures and people. Once a society reaches a level of complexity where it can run itself, the player can leave and go build another one somewhere else. Players receive an impressive amount of free customization options for item cosmetics and personalization to leave their mark on the civilizations they leave behind.

My Colony also supports multiplayer, allowing players to link their colonies together to share resources, Sim City-style. If you're looking for an intuitively laid out city management experience, with extensive stats to track and decent end-game content, check this out.

Business is booming in these fantastic management and tycoon games!

Management and tycoon games aren't just great for killing time. They also teach important lessons. Often, these games promote cultivating and nurturing into something greater, which can take time and patience, and that is one of life's most valuable lessons. But these aren't the only games that require time and patience. This is well-trodden territory for lovers of the greatest RPGs on Android, encouraging you to optimize your grinding efficiency and get further faster. So, if you're looking for an outlet to test your patience and management skills, we encourage you to try any of these fantastic games on this list.