Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 12:18 pm
Drum Corps Tycoon – Simulation Game Review
Drum Corps Tycoon is a Simulation/Strategy game from David Lukens, first launched in 18th June 2020.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 212+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Drum Corps Tycoon Stand Out
Drum Corps Tycoon is a simple strategy game where the player gets to run their own drum corps and compete against real history drum corps scores. Deal with random events, make design choices, and build your trophy pile on the way to that coveted founders trophy!
Thank you so much for the support, and have fun!
This Simulation game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Drum Corps Tycoon is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 16th October 2020
Recent improvements include:
In This Update:
-Bug squashing! The main focus of this update was to fix some bugs in the game.
-Stats panel beta! Located in the pause menu, the game now tracks info about the player during each season. This is still very basic and does not include scores from each season yet. (scores and more stats coming soon!)
Download & Availability
Drum Corps Tycoon is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Drum Corps Tycoon on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We really like the game and got addicted to it from the first time playing. This game has a lot of potential to be something bigger. Though we found a little bug where im in our 7 season and cant buy new caption heads. Hope it gets fixed soon.
If we didnt know that going from nothing to winning world champs 5 years in a row with millions of dollars in the bank was so easy, Id understand why the Madison Scouts are out of finals.
This is a nice game. Worth the price. Just be sure to fix those score inaccuracies soon.
We got this game around a couple months ago, and Ive done everything from re-downloading it, to resetting our phone to try and get it to work, but it just will not work. It shows the lothype.com screen, the unity screen, then goes black and either nothing happens, or it crashes. For reference, we are using an IPhone 6 running iOS12.4.8.
The game seems really cool but it wont actually start.
We had previously left a 3 star review which was heavily critical of the game for its difficulty. Im happy to say that the recent update to the game has fixed the issue! We will happily now give the game 5 stars, and we strongly recommend this to any drum corps fan.
Really great, but we left the app and wanted to continue later, and couldnt get off the scoreboard for the first show :/. We could start a new season we think but dont wanna lose progress.
We played this game so many times, but its so hard to beat the frickin Madison scouts… The highest score we got was 76. Something, but we want to challenge the big leagues ya know? Please let us have those victories in future updates, thank you very much.
Overall, loved the idea & the overall gameplay. Some critiques: 1. Get rid of max level, or create a max level thats MUCH higher 2. Add some more scenarios for the Special Events & the problems you're required to solve. The ones already in there are great! 3. Maybe make a way to hire certain techs & captains. We think making it something like how you hire people for heists in GTA 5 would make it better & also allow for some character development if you were to go that route 4. We would also like to see some way for you to design your own show. Not exactly how you could do that but we think adding elements to give the player more control over the performances would be a nice touch Like we said earlier, its already a great game but theres some improvements we mentioned, along with countless other reviews, that would make the game even better. Keep up the good work.
For the sheer fact that this is so enticing to us as a drum Corps fan is enough for us to give it five stars off the bat. However, we are blind and would love to know if this game currently is VoiceOver compatible or will be in the future. We appreciate all that youre doing, and we hope that other blind and visually impaired drum Corps fans will be able to enjoy this game as much as others. Keep up your good work.
This game is really fun and has huge potential, it does has a bugs like we won a championship but the plaque said the year later like if we won 2016 it would we win 2017 so then it would be in a loop because u can never finish the case since all the space is already taken up when u get too 2018 champs. But overall loving the idea and could be big.
As a band kid, we saw this game and had to get it. Its so fun to play!! Its like Bitlife but youre a band director. Very fun, do recommend. Gotta love when we end up bearing our favorite corps like Carolina Crown and the Bluecoats.
Im really hyped that the game is starting its launch off of being an amazing app (it already is, but even more amazing) and we love the team putting so much effort into it. Im also very happy that there will be weekly updates, because games with weekly updates are the games that stay around for a long time, and we cant wait to see where this app is heading, thank you team :).
We are on an iPhone 6 and it freezes at the loading screen when it says unity.
Hello, This game has incredible potential. Here are something we have noticed: we dont know if this has been brought up but one thing that kept happening for us was the champions didnt always line up with the correct season. For example, lets say the year was 2016, and our corps scored a 99.05 and got beat out by the 2005 Cadets 99.15. And then, it says the 2016 bluecoats won with their lower score. So basically, older season scores kept getting mixed with the newer ones. That was incredibly strange but we understand the game is early anyway. Last things: The more challenging the game is the better (in our personal opinion). Im also excited for the possibility of extra modes and such. Thank you for making such a wonderful game and we hope everything turns out beautifully.
Love it but please a setting where you can mute sound, thank you.
Its so much fun and we cant wait to see where it goes.
This game will be more fun if you can actually design your show like the drill music or color guard choreography and the props and more competitions will be more fun also designed customes.
Good game but doesnt work with iphone 5s or ipad.
This is a really cool game and an awesome idea! In the future if you could add a longer season that would be absolutely awesome.
Cant even open the app. Love the idea but we cant play at all.
Wow at first when we saw the price we were a little bit worried. But it was definitely worth it. This game was really fun to play, we mean we accidentally played this for four hours without noticing the time. Good job to the creators for making a fun and exciting game. However, as we stated in the title there was a few small things. The first being when we got tired of staring at our phone screen. We wanted to get a bigger screen so we downloaded the game on our iPad. Unfortunately the game doesnt fit on the iPad screen and we couldnt press a lot of the buttons. The second being the max level. We understand the use of the max level because the game has a season limitation on it, which leads us into our final complaint which is we should be able to go as long as we want and win as many championships as we want. Then when we are done we can restart the game ourselves. Finally we had a few other ideas for this game and these include 1. Being able to buy and run multiple other drum corps 2. As stated earlier more seasons 3. Also stated earlier get rid of the max level 4. Make the game playable on the iPad 5. Im sure this will take a lot of time but make a 5 second mini show to play at the championship we are sure that we will come up with others in the future. But for now those cover it. Thanks for reading our review.
This is a pretty good way to pass the time. Its pretty interesting seeing how all the values you change affect how youll do during the season. All in all its a really fun app to just pass time.
Great game, but when we had left the screen and when we returned everything was messed up and we couldnt even resume our game where we had won the DCI championship 2x and now we gotta start all the way over. We would like it where we could design the corps uniforms and maybe see like a visual of them on the field. We would also like to see where we could design a drill for them.
We thought this was amazing. It was very fun and entertained us. Unfortunatley, we had one problem with the game. We are playing on an Ipad. When we played the game, the edges of the game were cut off. We could not see part of the screen. This made it difficult for us to upgrade and improve. After our first performance, a screen showed up, showing the performance of our drum corps and the ticks. We could not see any exit or close button. So, we were stuck on that screen. We could not continue to play. This game is great, but we wish screen wasnt cut off.
We like this game and cant wait to see what later updates will bring! It doesnt have a whole lot to do right now, and is pretty buggy, but hopefully these will change in the future.
Seems like a lot of fun, but it will not start on our Iphone 6, we get the unity screen, a black screen and then it crashes.
This game looks really fun being in marching band ourselves… However, we paid for it and every time we click on it, it instantly crashes. We cant even get into the game… Ill change our review once this is fixed or we get refunded. Is there anything Im doing wrong, Im confused.
This game for being so early stage is quite enjoyable and such a fun game to play! We cant wait to see where this project goes next.
This game is already sick. And if nothing else was ever done with it, Id probably still make a full-through on a weekly basis. Its got plenty of replay value. We just cant wait to see where it goes. Maybe there will be a dynasty mode where you begin at the founding of DCI as one of the founding corps and literally play 60 years, trying to recreate the success of that corps or do even better! Basic color scheme customization and uniform presets like what kind of hat will your corps wear? Jacket designs, etc. Maybe there will be a little bit-performance of 2-3 drill sets when your corps takes the field. Just so many possibilities. Im here for all of them. And Im happy to pay $.99 a pop or whatever for cosmetic additions like Ive described. This is a really cool game and has a lot to give. Lets support the designer as much as possible and help make this game the best it can be.
Tried to save money by feeding our band expired meat from Walmart and they all got sick. 10/10 highly recommended.
We absolutely love this game! After a couple time playing we realized that you can win the first season by just maximizing spending and hiring 200 techs in each caption. You then stay afloat with the loan that the bank gives you which was something like 26 million! We hope you guys keep updating drum corps tycoon, it has tons of potential.
Nice but needs some more added later like marching animation for a simulated routine on field. Also maybe uniform design and customization. Good game though.
We love the gameplay and its offering us a shred of serotonin in these trying times but its prone to getting stuck and crashing.
We found out about this game from an EMC Productions video, and we thought Id try it out. We never thought a game like this would be so fun to us, especially the attention to detail about drum corps. Even the corps that won at championships that year, in the game, was accurate too! One thing Id like to request is to make the game play for longer, or play for as long as you want. You start from the 2000 season and end at the 2019 season. This is fine, but we wish we could play more seasons, like not going into the future but the option to start your corps more in the past. For example, you can have the option to start at the beginning of DCI in 1972, or pick your own year to start from, like 1982 or 1995 or whatever. It would also be great to update this game to make it include the 2021 season, 2022 season, and possibly the 2023 season (depending on when this game is updated). Overall a great game, we just wish more could be added to it.
We really do enjoy this game but now for months its been stuck where we cant continue on with the group we currently have. We might have to start over to fix this problem.
Great game, we truly love it. But we just got our first championship and now our game just keeps crashing and we cant start a new season.
Is it just us or after the first first start up and when you get off of it and start it up again. The game just doesnt boot up nor gets to the main menu. Over all the game is great just a minor problem that has happened.
Gosh this is such a wonderful game! We spent the last 2 hours on it and we are obsessed. The only problem for us is that after the 2013 season the game would freeze and we cannot resume; we hope itll get fixed in the next update because we really want a long dynasty with our corps.
Fun game to play! To us it feels a bit short only doing prelims and finals, maybe add like more competition locations? And it would be amazing to add our own corp logo ! But overall great game and purchase cant wait to see it thrive more.
For $2.99 this game has SO many good things going for it. The simplicity and design of a game we never expected to exist is a lot of fun to go through and we know this game is still new so we trust that lots more content will become of it. The only issue is the loading times and the ability of the game to load past finals 2009. Otherwise, solid game for the price. Well worth it.
Great game, it satisfies our love for games and marching arts. Just a couple suggestions: After we completed the game, it started crashing. One thing Id like to see for the future would be more competitions. We know this games in beta, but we think it will go great places :).
We think you have a killer Oregon Trail x Game Dev Sim crossover that if you expand could be REALLY good. Amazing work!! We filled out the survey for what bugs we saw and improvements could be made.
We love this app. We can actually march in 2020, but as a director.
Even in the early stages this game slaps. A very simple and elegant idea. We cant wait to see how the game develops as more things are added. Fantastic job.
Love the game! Hopefully more shows are added, would love to see a longer season.
This game is very fun. But it crashes when starting up the app.
This was a really fun game. We cant wait to see what they add. Only real issue for us was after the 2012 season the game freezes and shuts down. Im sure that will be fixed in the next update. Definitely worth the $2 to support this.
If we could beat the cadets, we would give it 6 stars.
Its a little simplistic in this early stage, but VERY addicting. Cant wait to see how this game develops.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2020.10.2
- Size: 767.29 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: David Lukens
Last updated: 16th October 2020 | Genre: Simulation, Strategy | Developer: David Lukens