Polish developers at Games Incubator introduce Candy Shop Simulator to the simulator market. Here you manage your own shop and make some products yourself!
Who am I? Let’s decide!
As a welcome change, Candy Shop Simulator begins with a character creator. Many games in the simulation genre seem to lack this. However, this only seems to matter if you choose to play in the third-person mode. If you play in the first-person mode, this feature is essentially pointless, as you will only see what you look like when you are riding a bicycle.
Show me what to do!
As expected from this type of game, Candy Shop Simulator starts with a tutorial. It explains in detail how to furnish your store. Next, the game guides you to use the wholesale shopping app on your phone. It’s a bit odd that there’s no PC to handle these actions, but the phone works just as well. After that, you follow the helper NPC to the local grocery store to buy ingredients for your first cake.
Candy Store Simulator teaches you how to make a cake. Unfortunately, the game limits you to a single type of sponge and only three layers, including fillings but excluding icing. I felt disappointed because I wanted to express more creativity and make tall, gateaux-style cakes. I also found the icing element really difficult to control, and making a cake look even reasonably professional was difficult. The game could do with piping options and other ways to decorate, rather than painting on icing and dumping fruit on top.
Open For Business?
Once this stage is complete, you can open your store for business. This is where Candy Shop Simulator really let me down. There is no clock. No day/night cycle. To me, one of the main attractions of this type of game comes from the small dopamine hit I get at the end of each day. Without the time element, Candy Shop Simulator presents an open-ended experience with no clear structure. This made me feel that the tasks I was performing felt pointless. Plus, when you hire staff, you pay them hourly. Candy Shop Simulator has no clock. What does Candy Shop Simulator classify as an hour?
Where did Candy Shop Simulator hit the sweet spot?
Candy Shop Simulator has such a lovely look to it. It is a bright and cheerful game that doesn’t feel like it is just another asset rehash. The creativity you are able to express within the game is good, although a little limited. The controls are nice and simple, and the tutorial is strong and really holds your hand when needed. Also, extra bonus points for making the tutorial NPC travel at the same speed as the player when moving around.
What felt sour about Candy Shop Simulator?
Candy Shop Simulator desperately lacks a time and day/night cycle. This leads to rather boring gameplay as there are no “wins” along the way for that little dopamine hit. The creative elements of Candy Shop Simulator are very limited, and you are restricted to a rigid set of things you can do. Candy Shop Simulator does not guide as to how often you will pay your staff, which is an element of the game that I find confusing. This makes financial planning more difficult.
The minigame to guide customers to purchase items relies on memorising items that are located within a help screen, which is a little confusing. As far as I could tell, there is no ability to change prices, and prices feel ridiculous and make no logical sense.. There is no ability to see how much stock remains of some products you create, such as cake.
Candy Shop Simulator has the potential to be a really fun and refreshing entry into the already crowded simulator market, but lets itself down massively with boring gameplay lacking goals and aims, as well as a far too limited creative opportunity when it comes to making cakes, cookies, and lollipops. It is not by any stretch unsalvagable, but without some remedial work being performed very soon, I feel Candy Shop Simulator deserves its place, falling to the wayside to let better games come to the forefront.
Overall
Candy Shop Simulator showed real potential, and I felt excited for its release, but it ultimately left me very disappointed. The lack of direction and meaningful small victories severely hurts the experience. Its awkward yet overly simplistic creative elements create a lingering sense of dissatisfaction with what you produce. The absence of clear stock level indicators for your custom products also makes the game feel rushed. Unless the developers put in serious effort to fix these major gameplay issues, I would avoid this game and not recommend it.
Developer: Games Incubator
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Publishers: Games Incubator, PlayWay, Games Incubator S.A.
Played On: PC
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