Ice Cream Craze: Tycoon Takeover
Game Review

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Ice Cream Craze 2 is the sequel to the original Ice Cream Craze that made time management games cool (heh). Help Anna grow her business from an old ice cream truck into a force to challenge the well-established ice cream tycoon BigCo.

In the original Ice Cream Craze, you helped a teenager in the 1950's called Jan run her parents' ice cream shop. Now, it's 2 decades later, and you find out that her shop was run out of business by a giant company called BigCo. You now play the part of Anna, Jan's granddaughter. Anna believes that she can compete against BigCo, and starts off by serving ice cream out of an old ice cream truck. Granny Jan is also there to give advice along the way.

The overall goal of the game is to grow Anna's business large enough to challenge BigCo. You do that by having over $5000 in the bank and significant busines presence in all 9 locations in town. How you go about this is what makes the game stand out from other time management games and presents a fresh new perspective.

The main part of Ice Cream Craze: Tycoon Takeover is the actual serving of ice cream to customers at the ice cream truck. This starts off pretty easy at first, with just cones, 3 flavors of ice cream and 3 toppings to choose from. But depending on each level's difficulty, you might end up having to juggle cones, brownies and pies, and all sorts of flavors and toppings.

The difficulty of each level depends on which part of town you are in and what you are playing for. And this is where the game stands out from other time management games. In other games, you get to buy upgrades in between games. In this game however, the upgrades are rewards in completing specific levels. So you will need to decide whether you want to play for an espresso machine that gives you temporary speed boosts, or a cupcake platter that keeps your customers satisfied for longer.

The game isn't just a linear series of levels as well. The gameplay is separated by days, and what you decide to do each day has a huge impact on how successful your ice cream business will be. Wiill you spend Day 9 trying to earn the espresso machine? Or should you instead be trying to set up a new stall at the circus in order to earn you continuous side income every day? Setting up new stalls might be a good idea, but if you don't go for efficiency upgrades, you might find some of the more advanced levels a bit hard to cope with.

It is this overarching strategy that gives the game much of its appeal and will keep you coming back for more even after you've finished the game. Do you want to play like a businessman and quickly establish bases all over town? Or would you rather increase the efficiency of your ice cream service and earn big bucks every day?

The look and feel of the game isn't too bad either. There aren't any flashy movies or cool animations, but the graphics in the game are pleasant and definitely capture the feel of an ice cream business. However, one thing that bothers me is the abnormally big eyes that the characters have. They just creep me out...

Ice Cream Craze 2 is a great game to try, not only because it contains a really good time management aspect, but also revolves around a very fun and delicious business. Furthermore, the overall strategic and business decisions you have to make in this game give it a unique feel that is different from the other time management games out there.

Rating: 4.0/5.0  

Watch a demo video of the game!

 Download Ice Cream Craze: Tycoon Takeover onto your computer

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