Stand O’ Food City: Virtual Frenzy (iOs) Review
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You want a little time management action? Some city building? Maybe a little strategy thrown in for good measure? Stand O’ Food City: Virtual Frenzy has all of that in one tidy package. The back story to Stand O’ Food City: Virtual Frenzy is that you are going to develop your own little empire. You’ll […]
You want a little time management action? Some city building? Maybe a little strategy thrown in for good measure? Stand O’ Food City: Virtual Frenzy has all of that in one tidy package.
The back story to Stand O’ Food City: Virtual Frenzy is that you are going to develop your own little empire. You’ll start out with a classy little burger joint, where your customers come in with a certain order in mind, and you have to prepare it to their specifications before they get angry and leave. This aspect of the game is really a fun mechanic, with each customer showing an image of the burger they’d like above their heads, and all of the components to make the burgers lined up on conveyor belts in the restaurant. You can only take the ingredients at the very end of the conveyor belts (unless you purchase special items), so you’ll do a lot of juggling – moving unwanted ingredients to spare plates, or filling burger orders out of order. It keeps you hopping for each cafe level, and as you advance in the game more items are added – ketchup, lettuce, sodas, fries, and so forth – so keeping all those customers happy is a tall order.
In addition to the time management element, you also need to supply your restaurant(s) with ingredients. A salad farm keeps you in lettuce, a cattle farm produces the meat that can be then turned into hamburger at the processor, the dairy farm produces milk that is then made into cheese. You’ll need to collect each of these as they are produced, and then start the process of making more – but you can’t make cheese if you don’t have milk, so you’ll have to juggle the right amount of ingredients to keep things rolling along. You are only able to play the time management levels if you have enough ingredients to do so, so the farming aspect is quite important. All of the farms/factories produce on a timer, so you can either wait hours in between, or use diamonds to instantly produce. You do get a decent amount of both diamonds and coins to start with, but you’ll quickly go through these getting started.
Along with the time management and supply aspects, you also are building a city. In order to make your restaurant more popular (and bring in more customers), you’ll build interesting features like fountains and benches, plant trees and supply traffic lights, and put in roads as your city expands. You’ll also need to build each of the new factories for your business, and then upgrade them to keep things growing. Some new buildings can be earned through completing various tasks and levels, and you can then place them around the map as you like. Many buildings need to be purchased, like the factories for expanding business, or new restaurants to keep your cafe business hopping. These cost a lot of money in relation to what you actually earn. For instance, starting out you may get twelve to eighteen customers at a time, which will earn you around $100 or so per level.
But often you’ll have less than ten customers per level, netting you well under $100. If a new building costs around $2000, and you can only play a couple levels per day, it will take you a really looooong time to build just one building, not to mention upgrading your farms, adding accessories like juke boxes and air conditioners, and purchasing bonus items. It all boils down to either playing only a few minutes a day, or shelling out for in-app purchases.
I’m not a huge fan of freemium games – I’m the type who would much rather pay five bucks for the whole game and enjoy it at my own pace. But I get the attraction of a free (to start anyway) game. You can try it out, put some time into it and figure out if it’s your kind of thing without having to drop any cash right off the bat. The problem here, though, is that even if you do drop cash into it (and why not? supporting the developers is important if you like a game), you just aren’t ever going to get to the point where you can just sit down and play for as long as you like.
If you do put money into it, you’ll be able to play for twenty minutes, maybe a half hour or so, and then you’ll be right back where you were before – able to play for a few minutes at a time, unless you put still more money into it. If you’re the type who really only wants to devote a few minutes here and there to a game, you’ll be perfectly happy with this game. There really is a lot to offer, and all kinds of ways to develop. But if you want to play for a while, and see reasonable advancements, you’ll just end up frustrated. I would love to see an option for a full game unlock for a set amount, rather than the endless in-app purchases you get here.
Stand O’ Food City: Virtual Frenzy is a genuinely fun game – you have all sorts of different aspects to keep track of, from farming to city building to time management, and so many different directions to take. Unfortunately, after you use up the generous amount of coins and diamonds that are given at the start of the game, you’ll soon find yourself lost in an endless cycle of in-app purchases or extremely short game sessions. As long as you know that going in, it’s a fun game that will keep you engaged for a long time. However, if you aren’t willing to put up with the money grab, you’ll likely be happier just paying for a full version of one of the many enjoyable time management games on the app store.