All posts tagged in strategy
Apr 4, 2024
There’s something so satisfying about playing restaurant management sims. Managing the decor, the employees, food options, and customer satisfaction without the real life clean-up is so much fun. But what if you had to deal with difficult workers and had to fend off disasters? Well, Recipe for Disaster lets you experience both! The game expertly captures the fast-paced, drama-filled environment of a professional kitchen. Build and decorate your dream restaurant, build your own menus with recipes you’ve created, manage staff, and satisfy customers!
Assemble your perfect restaurant using intuitive built-in tools. Design the layout and decorate with furniture and decor to create your ideal environment. From plants to lamps and lanterns, fun table designs and wall textures, you’re able to create whatever type of restaurant you want. Hire staff from a pool of people. Consider their traits and skill levels to gather a competent staff. You need to manage their mood and stamina levels to avoid breakdowns and poor work ethic. Recipe for Disaster also lets you assign each person to a specific task. They may or may not enjoy that task, so shuffling workers around may be necessary to find balance. Even use the recipe editor to freely create your own recipes, but remember that the customer is always right, so your recipes may need to be adjusted to suit their tastes or even allergies.
Release Date
Recipe for Disaster is available now on Steam!
This game reminds me of Restaurant Empire II in the management sim-type similarities. However, I think you should try out Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!, too!
- Apr 3, 2024
Growing Up by developer Vile Monarch puts you in control of your life as you control every aspect of your childhood and on into parenthood. Choose your friends, learn what you want, and find that perfect someone to raise a family with. Customize your character with a wide range of clothing and hairstyles. And explore a unique game with rich storytelling full of choices for you to make!
Get lost in the nostalgic sceneries of the 1990s as you navigate life with friends and family in Growing Up. It was an era of rapid social change, plus saw the rise of pop culture, and you get to experience it all by visiting 30 different locations across your city. Visit the movies or listen to music at the local street shop. Learn and master over 200 different skills that can land you in some pretty incredible jobs like astronaut or video game company CEO. Build friendships, get into arguments, fall in love and start a family, and more. Each choice you make influences the narrative you unlock, making this a great game to replay to get different outcomes.
Where will your story take you?
Release Date
Growing Up is available now on Steam!
Millenials is an immersive college life sim that lets you experience life as a dedicated college freshman.
- Apr 3, 2024
I’m taking it back a couple of years for this one because who doesn’t love a good tycoon game in the same vein as RollerCoaster Tycoon and such? This time, though, you run your own music festival! Festival Tycoon gives you the design and micro-management powers to create and run your dream music festival right from the comfort of your home. Plant flowers, fix toilets, book shows, and sign deals to grow your music show into a great success!
Use ‘create mode’ in Festival Tycoon to design your perfect festival grounds. Start from a modest backyard bash and grow into an international success. Pick from a variety of biomes to set up in, and place stages as well as food options and bathrooms to appease your guests. Set up a killer lineup from different music genres like folk, rock, and techno with your limited budget. And don’t forget the sponsors. They can help fund your dream festival, but they come with high demands you must meet. Plus, your customers need to be happy in order to have a successful show!
Will you build a globally successful festival?
Release Date
Festival Tycoon is available now on Steam and Epic!
- Mar 28, 2024
Ready for a chill sandbox gardening game? Then Plantabi: Little Garden is just the game for you! Developed by Adrian Corpuz, this adorable little game is all about decorating and building a beautiful little garden. Of course, you need to fulfill orders for customers too, because earning money allows you to buy even more!
Unlock new plants as you help the shop owner fulfill orders in Plantabi so you can raise a number of different types of plants. In fact, there are over 90 different plants to collect. Each plant needs to be lovingly cared for, so water and fertilize it to make it happy. Even equip each plant with a helpful orb that has unique abilities to help the plant thrive. Pick from a variety of decorative pots to perfectly design and enhance your gardening space. Plus, decorate with different items to personalize the garden into a relaxing oasis!
Release Date
Plantabi: Little Garden is available now on Steam!
Taking Root is a more realistic plant care game, if you prefer that!
- Mar 21, 2024
News Tower, by developer Sparrow Night, lets you live the life of an aspiring influential publisher in 1930s New York. Search the globe for worthy news stories to publish. Follow key moments from the 1930s like Prohibition, the Great Depression, and more. Or write up stories that are a little less important, like the local lost cat. It’s your choice on what stories to cover, but choose wisely, as you aren’t simply writing for yourself! The mafia, the mayor, and other important factions want to use your influence to publish their “truths” for all to see. Bending to their will compromises the integrity of journalism, but it does earn you unique rewards!
Manage and optimize your News Tower of employees as your business expands. Hire writers, janitors, photographers, and more to make sure your newspaper becomes a success. Also ensure each person’s needs are met so they’ll be as productive as possible. Decorate each floor of the tower to offset the oily, noisy printing machines that will cause your writers to write poorly. Lush plants ought to do the trick. Your newspaper won’t make sales and become successful if your employees aren’t happy!
Will you become a newspaper mogul?
Release Date
You can find News Tower on Steam now.
- Mar 13, 2024
Immerse yourself in a delightful pastel world of coffee shop management! In Coffee Caravan by developer Broccoli Games, you run your very own mobile coffee shop. Choose your daily menu to cater to customer tastes while experimenting with different flavors. Brew a variety of different coffee recipes. Then, serve up the tasty drinks to your customers. Be efficient in your tasks to earn the best outcomes!
Coffee Caravan offers a great hands-on experience when it comes to running your coffee business. Not only do you choose your daily menu, but you make each drink yourself. Upgrade your machines to increase speed and proficiency so you can fast serve your customers. Serve premium coffee recipes to earn more money, too. And each time you play through the game, you’ll find a whole different experience. Pick customers with higher difficulty levels, discover appliance and recipe shops along the way where you can buy new things from, and encounter special events and challenges that add a uniqueness to each playthrough. Plus, you’ll encounter final boss customers who are far more demanding and have higher standards than your usual customers, adding even more challenges!
Release Date
Coffee Caravan is coming to Steam this year!
Want more coffee shop fun? Try Capybarista!
- Mar 7, 2024
Minami Lane, developed by Doot and Blibloop, is a wholesome little street management game set on a Japanese-inspired street. Build homes to attract new villagers and ensure their needs are met by providing food and entertainment options. Green spaces like parks and hot springs beautify the street, which makes everyone happy, too! Decorate each building by picking from a set of colors, and strategically place your buildings to create an inviting environment. Complete missions or engage in sandbox mode to get creative!
Gameplay
Minami Lane is one of those short, but sweet games that lives in your brain just waiting for you to pick it back up and play again. There’s not a lot to the game overall, and it’s about a 2-4 hour playtime type of game. However, it’s so pretty, so cute, and just perfect enough to keep your attention and drag you back for more. It’s easy to pick and learn. You can use only your mouse to accomplish things by clicking. There’s no complicated controls or convoluted mechanics.
The game is perfectly laid-back in concept and actuality. You can pause the day, let it run normally, or even speed it up if you prefer. Plus, you can check the missions for the level at any time. What I found really neat was being able to save each villager’s request for a change to the street, which helped me better accommodate them. For example, some villagers prefer more egg in their ramen, and some wanted more daisies at the florist. I could save each of those comments and come back to them after the day ended so I could update the inventories of each shop. No guesswork or having to make use of my trusty notebook!
The color palette really adds to the charm of Minami Lane, too. It’s soft and pastel so it’s easy on the eyes, but nothing is muddled looking. This extends to the color choices you can make for your buildings, too. Nothing too bright or flashy is available, though I would love to see a larger color palette option for buildings. You can even pick a color for the park, which changes the colors of the trees so you can go for a cheery springtime cherry blossom look, or fun fall cozy look. Throw in the soundtrack with its peppy, but pleasant sound and it’s a perfect mix of visual and aural.
Final Thoughts
I loved every moment of this game. The simplicity, the adorable graphics, the ease of use. All of it. Plus, you get to pet the cats that show up and they make that great little “brrrt” activation noise. Everything about Minami Lane is charming and wonderful, and I can’t recommend it enough!
You can find Minami Lane on Steam now!
- Mar 6, 2024
Embark on an exciting journey in Brocula by developer Destroyer Doggo where you play as Brocula, a vampire who has just woken from a 500-year slumber. This world is bizarre and unrecognizable to him, plus his wealth has been stripped from him. Even his ancestral castle has been ravaged by time and is in ruins. Not everything is so simple and mundane as surviving in this new society, though. Can you figure out the times, settle in, and thrive?
You’ll need to navigate the unfamiliar capitalistic society in Brocula in order to be successful. Take on a series of part-time jobs at the coffee shop, garage, and restaurant to earn a little pocket money. Not only will you need this money to repair your castle, but you’ll need to wrestle ownership of it from the local mayor. You can also earn money by starting a farm next to the castle and selling your crops. Catch a variety of fish which you can turn into a bunch of tasty meals, too. And when you’re not busy with the mundane tasks of everyday life, you need to revive your cult. Restore the forgotten church and start giving sermons in order to attract members again. Or, go explore the everchanging forest to fight enemies and collect treasures!
Release Date
Brocula is set to Release on Steam March 27th. It is also listed on Xbox, and the developer’s website lists PlayStation, so hopefully that will come soon too!
Check out Voltaire: the Vegan Vampire for more vampire fun!
