Developer: Kozmo Games
Genre: Business
Pros:
- Easy to learn
- It's ice cream!
Cons:
- Limited management features
"Ice Cream Tycoon" Features
- Start off small and build your ice cream business.
- Sell ice cream in multiple neighborhoods.
- Upgrade your vehicle and hold more ice cream.
- 25+ types of ice cream.
- Hire staff and decide how much to spend on advertising.
- You decide which kinds of ice cream to stock.
- Each neighborhood has their own favorite ice cream.
"Ice Cream Tycoon" Review
"Ice Cream Tycoon" starts out... how do I say this? Odd and a bit disturbing. The background story has a little boy giving away his dog for an ice cream cart. Yeah. The poor dog. At least it wasn't the usual grandma needs help storyline. Right?
Before heading out the neighborhood, you decide which ice cream to stock your cart with. Each neighborhood has a preference for certain types. It's up to you to figure out what that it is. Not difficult to do, but can lead to a wasted day if you don't have any of the favorites. To make the most sales you can scroll around a bit and see which route has more potential customers.
As you travel around the neighborhood, depending on the weather and the population your choice will change day to day, the customers will run out of their house. A line will form to get ice cream. Speed depends on if you have upgrades. Some order more than one ice cream. If you have the ice cream in stock, you'll have a happy customer.
Here is here the game starts to show it's lack of depth. Not a lot of data is stored for you to work with. You'll have to take notes yourself. The game won't store how many ice creams or which flavors were sold. The planner in me would like to more data on the correlation of sales and temperature, and even the kinds of ice cream in which neighborhoods.
Not having to worry about dealing with too much data is a plus for new gamers or if you aren't into complex management games. I would have much preferred more management involved. I do want to warn you that, even though it's a good game for new gamers, it's the missions are not necessarily easy. Later missions are difficult, feeling downright impossible at times.
"Ice Cream Tycoon" is not the game for everyone. Like many other games grouped into the casual genre, it's a fun little game to have on your laptop. It's not a game you will fire up each night as a way to relax. Download the demo and get 60 minutes of playing time to check out "Ice Cream Tycoon."
