So you think you have what it takes to run your own grocery store? Thinks again, Supermarket Mania® 2 may challenge those aspirations as it throws you curve-balls and really puts your time management skills to the test.
As you may have already surmised from the title, Supermarket Mania® 2 is G5 Entertainment’s sequel to their wildly popular time management game, Supermarket Mania®. This game brings back Nikki and her friends Clarence, Wendy and Max, who have just arrived in Hollywood, CA where Uncle Ross needs help with his troubled supermarket chain, and the evil Mr. Torg is plotting his revenge schemes.
You’ll have to open several new stores, stock shelves, prepare special food and drink items and more, all while trying to keep your customers happy. But I’ll warn you now, things will not go smoothly, from Mr. Torg destroying your equipment, to hyper kids knocking things off shelves, to toddlers wandering off from their mommies, there will be plenty to distract you from your everyday tasks.
The initial FREE download gives players access to 10 levels, with the option to pay to unlock the game’s full complement of 80 levels directly from within the app. These 80 levels spread across six different locations including busy downtown Hollywood, the quiet suburbs, the beach, a ski resort, and the tallest building in town. Each new location adds new food preparation tasks that must be performed and a new store layout to master. From making milkshakes to brewing coffee, baking croissants to squeezing fresh juice, these tasks will have you dashing around the store collecting ingredients and spending precious time at machinery prepping them. Each level is treated as a single day’s work and you must try to meet certain monetary sales goals to successfully complete a level. Between levels you are given an opportunity to spend your sweat equity on upgrades or special power up items which may help guarantee your success in future levels.
Having never played the original Supermarket Mania® I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I did find the game both entertaining and somewhat addictive. I couldn’t help but feel the urge to play level after level as I got sucked into upgrading my equipment and helping out my sometimes irate customers. The gameplay is very similar (mechanically) to other time management games that I’ve played before, but there was a really nice queuing aspect that I hadn’t seen in this style of game before. You actually have the ability to queue up multiple actions (I believe I was limited to 5) for Nikki to perform. So let’s say you see that 4 shelves need stocking after which you’ll need to refill your cart. Well, you can just tap on the four shelves and the backroom and then Nikki will visit those places in the order you chose, with the ability to cancel them by tapping the equivalent of a historical undo button on the screen, to undo the queued actions.
Supermarket Mania® 2 is available in separate free iPhone and iPad releases, with the full 80 level game unlock costing $4.99 and $6.99 respectively. I only tried the iPhone release, but I can imagine that the iPad would have been even more fun to play on, as the only real issues I had with the game could be attributed to the smaller sized graphics on the iPhone.
For instance, when you are doing something like making a milkshake, you first have to tap on the milkshake machine which, in turn, changes Nikki’s shopping cart into a tray. Sometimes I found it difficult to tell whether Nikki still had the shopping cart or if she had switched over to the tray. Once you have the tray, you then have to go grab some ice cream and some milk and bring them back to the milkshake machine. On the iPhone’s smaller screen it can be difficult to see what things Nikki is carrying around with her, so unless you immediately queue these items for pickup, making milkshakes or fulfilling window orders can be a little more difficult on a small form factor iOS device than I imagine they’d be on the iPad’s bigger screen. These few moments of frustration were by no means a deal breaker, but if you own multiple sized iDevices, I’d recommend downloading both versions of the game and seeing which you like better before making the full game purchase. Sizing issues aside, the game’s graphics looked great on the iPhone’s retina display and between locations, you are treated to some nice comic book style cut-scenes that help tell the story.
In Conclusion
Supermarket Mania® 2 is a great addition to G5 Entertainment’s growing roster of time management games. Since the first 10 levels are free, there is really no excuse not to download the game and give it a try. This game easily offers hours upon hours of gameplay, with a nice difficulty curve and between the 48 Game Center achievements and the per-location global leaderboards, the replay value is fairly high. If you are looking for a new time management challenge, you should definitely check out Supermarket Mania® 2.
An iPad release is also available with a $6.99 full-game unlock.
