Coffee Tycoon is a radical idea. The brilliance of developer Jamopolis Interactive cannot be understated. Who else on this planet would possibly conceive of a strategy game without an ounce of strategy needed to play it?
Oh right, no one.
Easily 90% of the time spent playing this epic disaster will be spent clicking on one button: Begin day. Sure, you’ll need to occasionally manage your employees between the whopping three choices available. Better yet, buy some new products or add employee benefits, all with the potential to completely bankrupt you within a week of game play.
The problem here are the random events that transpire through the day. On the left side of the screen, text based actions — which the player has zero control over — make or break the business you’ve started. With any luck, you’ll have three local papers do a story on you in the span of one day, earning cash bonuses and extra customers. On the opposite side, your competitor may offer a coupon and take all of that away.
Where the hell is the coupon button and why can’t it be selected?
You can’t, because it doesn’t exist. None of these actions actually occurs within the game. The box is ridiculous in its bullet points. “Five company logos” and “Five cities to choose from” have no detectable effect on the game. “Dozen of game characters” is meaningless aside from the sad or happy smiley face above their heads when you scroll over them. Never mind that you can never change their mood.
“Dozens of store recipes” are nice if you can actually afford them. The prices to create them are well beyond the scope of the player’s pocketbooks, especially when a competitor seems to be playing the advanced version of the game you failed to get. How hard would it have been to even include an option to set the price of the drinks, the very core of the store in the first place? Instead, you’ll have to deal with a printing company miss-labeling your cups 100 times. Pick a new printing service!
It’s hard to fathom a worse strategy title than Coffee Tycoon, it completely misses the mark in terms of depth that strategy fans look for, and its uniqueness means absolutely nothing. This is an unplayable, disastrous, non-interactive, embarrassing, miserable mess. That’s also far more truthful than any of the selling points plastered on the box.
Coffee Tycoon is rated E (Everyone) by the ESRB.
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