15-Minute Reviews :: Ice Cream Tycoon

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review, Gaming Edition! Today’s target game is Ice Cream Tycoon by Merscom LLC – An ice-cream business simulator, complete with ice cream truck music goodness!

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Own and operate your own ice cream business, and try to become a millionaire mogul, a real tycoon! Start out with just a pushcart, a bell, and your choice of neighborhoods. You’ll need to make the right decisions about which ice cream to stock and which neighborhoods to work in. Watch out for the health department and local bandits that all want a big piece of your ice cream pie!

Get out there and make a million bucks and more in the ice cream business before your competition makes all of the cash in Ice Cream Tycoon.”

Quick Pros

• Usable interface (besides a bit childish)
• Does have a good amount of difficulty
• Arcade or story mode offers interesting variety
• Get pulled into playing

Quick Cons

• While has a childish look, it would likely be too hard for children
• Story is a bit weak and the voice actors are not great
• Music is extremely irritating after a while
• Minimized itself twice for some odd reason

Expansion

I’ve been a fan of all the Tycoon games. I started back with Aerobiz for the Super Nintendo and been fond of these styles of games ever since. I found that this game had a pretty easy to run interface and ran pretty well, when I figured out how to direct the guy on streets better, maximizing your cashflow by avoiding the parks and the dead-end street on the first area for example. With that said, the interface does look a little on the childish side; Don’t let the look fool you though, the game requires a good level of skill; I’d likely say that younger children would have a very touch time (Even frustrating) with this game.

There is two styles of gameplay; Arcade and story mode. Arcade mode gives you a more Lemonade Tycoon-style gameplay, where Story mode offers you an odd story with bad voice actors, giving you specific goals you must meet before so many days expire. I found that the first goal was rough to hit in the first place without much practice in the first place, though if you focus, you can hit the first goals, but be forwarned; In story mode every new goal you attain you continue with what you had from the last goal. This makes it even more challenging because you don’t know what goal you should be prepping to run with when you’re done with the current goal.

I found that while the game was challenging, there seems to be a lot to do throughout the game, including new transportation methods, upgrades for your transportation, figuring out what types of ice cream work well in each area and dealing with factors such as rain, population, thieves and much more. There are a lot of factors involved in this game, but not so many it isn’t managable; I found myself being pulled into the game and enjoying every moment of it.

With that said, the game wasn’t without its flaws. Besides what is mentioned above, I found the game’s music extremely irritating at best and I ended up blaring my music instead of listening to that. I also had an oddity where the game minimized on its own twice without any warning, so I don’t know where this came from, but I just restored the game and didn’t seem to affect the game outside that.

Final Verdict

I found that the game was rather enjoyable, though still difficult to play; I got addicted pretty well and did enjoy it thoroughly. It does have a lot of options to play with as well. For free, it is a great title to mess around with; As for paying $19.95, it isn’t a bad deal either. I would recommend it to anyone who may like the Tycoon games.

Posted by BladedThoth on Sunday, August 12, 2007