Gameplay Sound    Graphics Value Publisher: PlayFirst    Genre: Simulation Min OS X: 10.4    CPU: G4 @ 800 MHz    RAM: 256 MB    Hard Disk: 40 MB    Graphics: 800x600 @ 32-bit

DinerTown Tycoon October 9, 2009 | Richard Hallas

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Click to enlarge DinerTown Tycoon

Just when you thought there was nowhere left for the Diner Dash series to go, what happens? The characters jump genre and star in an entirely different kind of game. DinerTown Tycoon, as its name suggests, moves away from the frenetic action of the popular time-management series to a more relaxed and thoughtful resource-management genre.

DinerTown is under threat! The dastardly burger-chain, Grub Burger, is muscling in on the fast-food action, and its grubby wares fall somewhat short of being appealing. Hands up all those readers who have ever yearned to chomp down on a big, fat, juicy, live, wiggling witchetty grub, plucked fresh out of a tree root. (Don't all rush at once.) What, no takers? Well, I can't say that I blame you, but the unspoken implication is that they're the primary ingredient in the burgers being foisted on the burghers of DinerTown. The real magic that gives Grub Burgers their appeal, though, is the mysterious Ingredient X. We don't know what it is, but we do know that it's green, it glows, and it's addictive enough to make people not mind that they're eating burgers made from grubs.

So, what can be done to rid DinerTown of this affront to gastronomic good taste? The answer is obvious: competition from good restaurants that serve downright upright, straightforward God-fearing food; restaurants run by YOU! Remember, only you can save dinerkind and set their steps aright once again, so get planning.

This is achieved by serving sufficient numbers of customers of various types to convince them of the error of their ways in eating at Grub Burger. In the earlier stages you must serve at least 50 customers from each of half a dozen types; later on you'll need to serve 100 of eight types. Each customer has his or her own tastes, so you'll need to plan carefully to satisfy all of them and achieve the requisite sales before Grub Burger turns the district into a hive of grub-munching zombies.

You start off with one restaurant, one dish on the menu, a batch of the ingredients necessary to make it, and a relatively small amount of money. You are then free to spend your money as you see fit, but be careful: you must plan your budget prudently as it must cover everything you need to do. At a minimum, you'll need to restock your larder with ingredients: run out and you'll have nothing to sell! You'll also have to spend money to improve your restaurant, buy new recipes (each restaurant can have up to six dishes on its menu), invest in advertising, buy more restaurants and perhaps conduct research on customers' tastes.

Each day you will begin by checking the newspaper. This will give you an idea of the sorts of crowds you can expect during the coming day, it will tell you which ingredient is in particular demand on that day, and, perhaps most importantly, it will state the Daily Chef Challenge. It's important to pay attention to this and achieve the challenge whenever possible, as it's one of the keys to winning. If you meet the challenge, Grub Burger's progress will be slowed for that day, giving you the chance to pull ahead. Miss the challenge too often and you'll find the opposition unassailable.

Having checked what the newspaper has to tell you, it's time to plan what happens in your restaurant(s). You can adjust the price of each of the dishes on your menu; an initial mid-range price is set by default, but you can increase it into premium-price territory or reduce it to sale-price as you see fit. Generally, dishes become less popular over time, so you can make a fair bit of profit early on, but must reduce the prices downwards in order not to lose customers by overcharging.

In the restaurant menu screen, handy pop-ups tell you the ingredients required by each dish and give you information about the previous day's sales for that item: how many were sold, how many customers were lost because the ingredients ran out, and how many were put off because the price was too high. This is all essential information for deciding how to revise your prices and which ingredients to buy for the next day of trading.

If you have money to spare, you can buy new recipes to serve, though doing so is an expensive process. Moreover, since each dish has its own set of either two or three ingredients, you will need sufficient funds not only to restock your larder, but also to purchase new ingredients required by new dishes. Some recipes will also share the same ingredients, of course, so you must also take that into account. Remember also to keep an eye on whatever ingredient happens to be popular, as it will influence the coming day's sales.

With any cash you have left over after dealing with your food, you can improve your restaurant and/or buy advertising for the day: a strategically placed sign, placard, bunch of balloons or man in a monkey suit, for example. Advertising is expensive but important, and can have a very marked effect on your sales. Some of the adverts can be placed strategically on the map, and should be positioned where the most people are likely to pass by: I found that the best place was often right outside the competing Grub Burger restaurant.

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