“If you brew it, they will come.”
This could be the premise to build your own coffee empire, and in Coffee Tycoon it is.
Choosing from five different store styles each with its own company logo, as well as five different cities to begin in (New York, Chicago, Hollywood, Seattle, Miami) you will start your journey to become the most famous coffee shop chain in the world.
In a quick overview of the game screen, you can easily spot the different tabs for different managing screens.
The “Employees” screen is where you manage your personnel. There are three types of employees: the Executives (they open new stores), the Managers (they run the stores and help bringing in more customers) and the Baristas (they make the coffee, serve the customers and collect the money). Your percentage must be at 100% to begin a working day, so distribute your percentages according to your needs. If you need to make more money, raise the Barista percentage. If you want to bring in more customers, raise the Manager percentage. If expanding is what you need, raise the Executive percentage.
The “Menu” screen shows what is being served at your stores and what recipes are available for purchase. You can choose from different cappuccinos, latte, teas, lemonade, espressos, hot chocolate and iced drinks. Some of these require certain objects to be purchased in order to unlock their respective recipes (i.e. the espresso machine).
The “Upgrades” screen is a menu where you can find all sorts of different options to make your employees and customers happy, as well as upgrade your shop. You can buy benefits for your employees (such as health care and paid vacations), items to upgrade your shop (like a coffee grinder or espresso machine), advertising (newspaper, magazine or radio ads), create a franchise, buy stores and even make stocks available for investment. Usually, new upgrades are available after the completion of each level, and they get really expensive.
The “Customers” screen is a bit redundant; all you do here is have a look at all the different customers who are frequenting your stores.
I expected more of the gameplay though. The entire hour that I initially played the demo for, I had the feeling that I was playing Championship Manager: pick the players, pick the strategy, and wait for the results. The fun of actually playing the game wasn’t there. In Coffee Tycoon, it’s the same thing. All I did was choose the options, give the orders, and just watch the days go by, customers slowly sipping coffee while standing in the same position at my store.
There are hundreds of events (good and bad) that influence your performance, but it would be nice to have something actually happen on the shop screen instead of in a text box. Aside from these events, there are several coffee-related trivia and silly phrases from the customers, such as “My car has a gold cup holder.” How does that contribute to the success of my coffee-empire-managing abilities? Just buy the damn coffee and give me the money already!
The ultimate goal of the game is to have served one million customers, but on level 7 the rain of bad events made my efforts seem fruitless and finally, shortly after the 5000 customer mark, I got bored of staring at the same thing over and over.
You can visit the official website to try out the online demo and progress until you reach 250 costumers, or download the 60-minute trial for an hour full of boredom. And you better have some real coffee handy while playing it too.