Arcade Tycoon Review

Arcade Tycoon comes to us from the wonderful world of sim management games. No stranger to these myself, I’ve probably dumped about a 1/3 of my life hour-wise into playing titles like Rollercoaster Tycoon, Theme Hospital, and countless others. Given that most of the ‘classics’ in these genres popped up in the 90’s, my eye is always remaining peeled for the next greatest game to steal time away from me…at times being rewarded with hits like Planet Coaster/Zoo. The moment I laid eyes on Arcade Tycoon I knew I had to have it—would it capture the same magic from the nostalgia is so openly imitated in screenshots? It certainly looks gorgeous, but this biggest question of them all: is it fun?

To learn Arcade Tycoon’s particular brand of management you have the choice of playing through a tutorial level straight away, or jumping feet first into sandbox mode. As itchy as my mouse finger was on the sandbox button I did give the tutorial a quick go. A good basic stretch of how the game works: hiring, firing, buying, upgrading. Fantastic. Now that I knew where the buttons were—you know I switched it up to sandbox.

Alright, so…I’m assuming this is how most of us will actually get our foot in the door with this game. The sandbox is simply irresistible…who wouldn’t want to rock up with unlimited money and stars and just build your dream arcade first thing? Having the sandbox option available without unlocking anything was an ace move by the developers and I’ll tell you why: after a couple hours of messing around and seeing what the game had to offer asset-wise, I felt myself really wanting some main objectives to complete. The level select screen boasted some pretty rad arcade locations as well. Alright! Sign me up for it!

But first, lets talk about some of the basic mechanics of the game. Like I mentioned before, you hire and fire your staff just like any other management game. The roster will consist of a varying number between security, technicians and cleaners with their own unique stats (and sometimes traits). The talent of your worker will determine their starting pay as would be expected. Over time, you’ll have the option to promote everybody as they individually complete the tasks in their own job. This will have the consequence of you having to pay them more, but you’ll get a better worker. Got that? Great!

The machines, rubbish bins, and toilets all have a decay on them. That’s what our workers are for, right? You’ll have to strike a delicate balance, especially in the campaign mode, where either you’re picking up the rubbish yourself, emptying the bins, or calling in an outside technician to save more money. I found this to be really the core of the gameplay as you’re getting off your feet—you’ll spend a lot of time doing the grunt work and being very hands on with it all. This could be a good thing or bad thing depending on how you like to play your management games. I found it particularly relaxing most of the way to keep an eye on how everything was ran, and enjoy the brilliant soundtrack. 

When you’re squeezing money out of just about everything you can do to get it, there’ll be opportunities to complete contracts which give you a pool of tasks such as ‘Empty 20 bins’ or ‘Fire 5 employees’. These don’t just give you money though, some give you stars or both. The stars are used to unlock things to buy beyond the few you start with in every category, or to do things such as help upgrade machines around your arcade along with a fee. These contracts in theory are a great idea—and complete a set few and you’ll get a special coin to purchase a machine from a special category where they have great stats…but they do have their downside. The overall diversity of them isn’t very deep; you’ll find yourself doing a lot of the same over and over again, and sometimes they’re just plain not worth it if you’re doing them to grab the rewards upon individual completion. The only real incentive to take one on that might be nasty (like fire employees) is to get that contract coin for the contract coin machines. A great end goal, sure, but when they dangle like carrots before you through gameplay, you sometimes really wish you had useful ones available.

Random encounters will take place to spice things up, like alien invasions, robberies, birthday parties, and things of that nature. I won’t tell you what they all do, but either they speak for themselves or are a fun surprise, but it’s exactly that—a fun surprise. They really do break up gameplay and provide a small challenge right in the middle things.

I’ve mentioned it in bits a pieces, but the soundtrack and graphics are absolutely top notch said with a completely straight face. The pixel are and animations are AMAZING. The music is catchy (if not wishing it was longer!) and loops great as you get lost in it all. I cannot say enough about these two things as they do an incredible job with most of the heavy lifting in appeal. Top marks on both for sure.

That’s not to say that Arcade Tycoon is perfect however. I hate to say it, but the game would benefit with more decorating assets and tweaks in certain gameplay aspects, like the contracts for instance. It’s got a hook that will keep you interested for quite some time, but doesn’t quite have the bite that keeps you there forever….yet. I do know that as of now there will be some scheduled hotfixes to squash a few bugs and hopefully add in a few suggestions that the community has been openly sharing with the developers. It’ll be a game that I’ll pop into every so often, a game that I had a great time beating, and a game I would absolutely recommend to someone that ticks the boxes in being a sim management lover. Check this one out, friends— know that it needs a bit of work, but recognise it was made with love.