Everyone wants to be successful. Everyone has dreams of making it big one day… well, at least most do. Of course, the opportunities to do so are not always accessible or easy to come by. Sometimes they conceal themselves, and sadly, sometimes the right opportunity never arises in the first place, but this desire for success is what has driven the motivation behind most tycoon-style games.

You have seen them before: They are games that simulate some form of business in which you start out small and have build up your company or companies to profitable super-corporations. These games exist in all shapes and sizes, but for those people that wish for something in the more social and free-to-play space, then Mogul is something to check out.

The game is pretty simple: You start out with $100,000, purchase a franchise, and every hour your it earns you a salary. Once you have purchased a franchise, that’s when the actual game begins and decisions need to be made.

Four times a day, you have to deal with what is called the “To Do List,” in which you are presented with problems and business opportunities that must be resolved before it begins to affect your hourly income. Based on your answer, you receive a generated result that then affects your finances and businesses. Once you have sorted out the critical decisions, it’s time to take care of other financial burdens and opportunities.

Mogul integrates the ability to promote your holdings frequently in order to keep your business ratings, and, in turn, your hourly salary high. Furthermore, the game calls for the organization of stocked inventory and pay roll in order to keep things running smoothly as well as the ability to buy and sell various franchises.

If this sounds like a lot, don’t worry: The game includes a nice social addition for you and your friends. If it turns out that you need the help, you can recruit your friends on Facebook as partners. Once you have partners, you can then team up to purchase bigger and better businesses that “require” (new franchises have a partner requirement of one or more in many situations) more than just you to run. Nevertheless, even without partners, the game is very simple to understand as the choices you have to make are very self explanatory.

Of course, by no means is the game perfect. It is rather bland looking and could benefit from some graphical facelifts. The game is very pen and paper’ish, but if you are a fan of these kind of games, the look will hardly bother you. Other than that, the only issue is the upkeep inconsistency as it pertains to player input. The “To Do” items appear at four times a day, the business ratings players gain via promotions decrease hourly, and inventory and pay roll are daily. In order to make the most of your business, you need to check back regularly (hourly for maximum income) throughout the day in order to maximize your earnings.

With games such as Mogul, most people would normally log on for a little bit to make some changes, some decisions, check up on their success, and then come back the next day or so. However, if some issues are not resolved (such as pay roll), you do not receive any earnings until they are. This is mitigated a bit once the player gets into a sort of routine, but the idea of losing something (in this case potential profits) for not checking back constantly has a negative impact for some players. Granted, you don’t actually “loose” anything, you just earn more slowly, but the fact that anything decays can be misconstrued as such.

Nevertheless, Mogul is still an interesting game to check out if you are into either pen and paper style games or tycoon-based games. Moreover, the partner system adds a nice social feature to the application that creates some quality depth to the game’s potential.

Mogul may look a little plain, but the content is good and it’s quite easy to catch on and learn. It’ss just like mom and dad used to say: “Never judge a book by its cover.”