1 person found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 1.3 hrs on record (1.0 hrs at review time)
Posted: Nov 10, 2022 @ 7:49am


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Espresso Tycoon Prologue: Underwater is a standalone mission from the complete game of Espresso Tycoon in which you will manage your own coffee shop and build it by making your own beverage recipes, decorating it, and hiring competent employees.



Visual:
The graphic style of this game is really pleasing. If you're a decoration maniac then you wouldn't be disappointed as the decorations are well detailed. It might be due to image-based modeling and rendering. The customers' model and movement is pretty good. You could probably say that they made effort designing it. There's cinematic mode available where you can view your coffee shop as if you're there personally.


Audio
Basically the music of this game is somewhat relaxing and suits the game.

Gameplay:

So, basically, you decorate, manage your employees (hire and fire, fix their schedules), consider your budget and supply, advertise your coffee shop, and provide excellent customer service to keep your customers happy.

That's not really a gameplay isn't it? Anyway that's just if you're either lazy or excited to play the game.

The tutorial will explain the majority of how this game works. To begin, you will name and decorate your own coffee shop (decorations choices are so-so. Not too few but not too many). You may also design your own recipe by using what you have on hand to make your dream coffee or what will make your customers happy (you can see in the menu what makes them happy, of course it's not all about drinking nice coffee.) There are many clients to consider (as there should be) and what you should make depends on your target customer (kids, tourists, students, business, hipsters, elders, techies, and so on) (normally)


This game is kind of micromanagement as you will handle coffee shop from employees and their schedule, customers and what makes them happy, your mission (it's like your goal; like have 3 awareness billboards and etc), you will also handle your own finances, the data is available in the menu of the game, so in that you would see your expenses/income from 3 days ago, 2 days ago, yesterday and today. You will also see the employees' salary, their training stuff, your loan, orders, research and marketing, challenges (for extra stuff), and etc. So in short you have to handle your money smartly like how any business owners it should.

Aside from that, play it for a few more hours and it becomes repetitive. Although I stated that the tutorial would cover the majority of the gameplay, the tutorial itself is somewhat weak in depth. If you're too lazy to finish the tutorial, you might not like this. (Because, while you can advance without the tutorial, managing your coffee business without it will be tough because this is almost micromanagement.)

If you're just here to relax then maybe it's for you.


Controls

This does not support other controller support other than keyboard and mouse. With that being said, the controls is pretty easy and responsive.

Pricing
This is prologue/beta so it's free.



Verdict
Score
Good
7/10

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Developer response:
joanna_dreamwaygames  [developer] Posted: Nov 10, 2022 @ 9:02am
Thank you for your recommendation and such detailed feedback!

It's true that you can relax while playing our game (I hope so!) but it can be challenging sometimes, too :)

Balancing the gameplay is one of the hardest things while making the game. We're trying to find the best solution.

If you have some more suggestions after playing the Prologue - we'd love to hear them!