Overview
Turmoil is a simulation strategy game set during the 19th century oil rush, casting players as an aspiring oil entrepreneur trying to claw their way from broke newcomer to town mayor. The core loop is deceptively straightforward: lease land at auction, locate underground oil deposits using tools like a dowser or scanner, drill, and sell. But the competitive layer underneath that loop is where the game earns its name.
The town itself grows alongside your wealth. As profits roll in, new buildings appear, characters populate the saloon, and the stakes at each auction rise. Rivals aren't just flavor text either; they bid against you for land parcels, compete for town shares, and will happily undercut your oil prices if you let them. The path to mayor runs through beating them at every turn.
Gameplay and mechanics
The drilling system is the heart of Turmoil, and Gamious built it with satisfying tactile feedback. Before committing to a drill site, players use detection tools to read the terrain:
- Dowser: detects oil through surface vibrations
- Mole: tunnels underground to locate deposits
- Scanner: maps broader subsurface areas
- Gas vents: signal nearby oil pockets
- Drill placements: determine extraction efficiency
Once oil flows, managing the pipeline network to storage tanks and timing your sales against fluctuating market prices adds a light but engaging economic layer. Natural gas found during drilling can be burned to spike oil prices temporarily, rewarding players who pay attention to the market rather than just pumping as fast as possible.
What makes the auction system worth understanding?
The land and stock auctions are where Turmoil separates casual players from efficient ones. At the start of each season, parcels go up for bid in real time against AI competitors. Overpaying for a rich plot can still net a profit; underpaying for a barren one is just a loss. Reading which parcels the AI values highly, then either outbidding them strategically or letting them overspend, becomes a genuine skill over multiple campaigns.
Stock auctions run separately, letting players buy shares in the town itself. Owning the majority of shares by the end of the campaign is the win condition, so balancing drilling profits against share investment is a constant tension. Deals struck with saloon characters add another wrinkle, offering short-term advantages in exchange for longer-term costs.
Content and replayability
Turmoil ships with a full campaign mode covering the rags-to-riches arc across multiple seasons, plus a single-game mode built around procedurally generated levels. The procedural system draws from what the developers describe as literally millions of possible configurations, meaning no two standalone runs play out the same way. A Heat Is On DLC expands the base game with additional content, and the PS4 Classic bundle packages both together.
The game is available across a wide range of platforms including Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, iOS, Android, Steam, and Epic Games Store, with Apple Arcade carrying Turmoil+ for subscribers. That reach reflects how well the core design translates across input methods. The pick-up-and-play structure suits mobile sessions without feeling dumbed down on PC, and the ESRB E10+ rating keeps it accessible without stripping out the competitive bite that makes the strategy layer worth engaging with.