Kuyi Mobile returns with a second helping of food slinging fun in this second outing of Streetfood Tycoon.
Bigger and broader, Streetfood Tycoon: World Tour offers players ten times the content of the original, spanning the globe with four different locations to tackle including the US, Europe, Asia and South East Asia, each with its own local cuisine to master.
If you haven’t played Streetfood Tycoon before, the goal is fairly simple. You own a food cart and each day you are trying to serve as many customers before closing time (5pm), earning the most money possible. To serve customers, you use your finger to tap on the correct ingredients, combining them on the plate, then serving it up to the hungry customer with a swipe of the finger. Make sure to each customer requests are fulfilled correctly and in a timely manner as the faster you serve customers, the more likely you are to earn a tip. Serve them the wrong food and they’ll walk away without paying. You must also keep an eye on your workstation to make sure it is clean and all the ingredients are well-stocked. Multitasking is always a key part of any good time management game and Kuyi Mobile has done a nice job of testing your multitasking abilities.
At the start of the game you are asked to select a location where you’d like to open up shop, a decision which also determines the initial type of food that you will be serving. This ranges from selling burgers and steaks in the US, French Fries and Chips in Europe, Rice and Noodles in Asia or fishballs and Kikiam in South East Asia (if you don’t know what these are don’t worry, trying new things is part of the fun). Each location has a specific difficulty level assigned to it, but I found that I had no problem jumping right in with Asia (even though it was marked as ‘Hard’).
Next comes one of the neat, unique aspects of this game, instead of just giving you the same pre-set amount of money, you get to choose how you will initially fund your food cart enterprise. Once again, you have four choices, each of which will give you a random, but increasing amount of money, meaning you can afford more upgrades right off the bat (more about this in a sec), but you will consequently have more money to payback later if you want to reach Tycoon status (which requires zero debt, among other conditions).
This choice can have a big impact on your style of play. If you are looking for a more zen-like experience where you slowly build up your business, earning upgrades as you go, then start with just a little money, but if you want to fast track the game to the more frenetic gameplay, then you’ll want to get a nice chunk of starting capital to get things up and running quickly. I played through the game both with a small amount of initial funds and with the largest amount of initial funds and I definitely found having more upgrades from the get go to be a lot more fun as you can unlock additional new food items more quickly and/or move your cart out to the suburbs, or downtown where you will get two customers at the same time, requiring you to be quicker on your toes. I think it’s nice that the game can accommodation two vastly different types of players as many time management games lead players down a fairly linear progression path with pre-defined levels of ‘frenetic’ gameplay.
Since this is a free-to-play title. there is an in app purchase system that allows players to purchase in-game currency using real money, mostly to speed things along. I never felt obligated to do so, with patience and time you can earn any/all the upgrades you want just through normal play. So if you are anti-IAP, don’t let it scare you away, there is loads to enjoy for free while you decide if you’d like to support the developer with an in-app purchase.
On the downside, like any time management game, the actual gameplay can become a bit repetitive after a while, so that’s where the upgrades and unlockables come into play. As you earn money from each ‘day’s’ worth of sales. You can pay to get better meat providers which will increase your revenue, or buy items that will restock your ingredients faster, or move your cart to a new location which will earn you more money, or even unlock celebrity customers. This is where the game really picks up any monotony dissipates.
Several ‘days’ into your sales a fun transformation happens where the cart becomes a familiar part of you and you will find yourself grabbing ingredients almost w/o looking at the screen, because you know your cart and you start to feel like a real sales person. However, when it starts getting too comfortable, you can (and must) challenge yourself by upgrading to add additional food items, or move to a new location. If you aren’t upgrading, you aren’t doing it right! By upgrading and building up your cart, you help yourself reach Tycoon status, allowing you to franchise your business and unlock the three additional locations around the world.
In Conclusion
Streetfood Tycoon: World Tour is a very enjoyable, free-to-play food cart adventure that will have your fingers flinging food and serving up smiles. No matter if you like your time management games slow and zen-like or fast and frenetic, this game can accommodate either style of play. Offering players an amazing amount of free content, in-game stats, an interesting upgrade path, short and long-term goals and a taste of cuisine from other cultures, Streetfood Tycoon: World Tour packs a lot of punch and is not to be missed.
