Game review: Yummy Drink Factory

In Yummy Drink Factory, you have been spirited away by a witch to a fairy tale land. You need to serve beverages to customers in five different villages. Each village brings you closer to a magical map that will help you get home. When I first downloaded the game, I thought it was going to be a very typical time management drink game. However, there is a little more to it. Instead of just serving pre-made drinks, you need to combine different ingredients to make special drinks for the customers. For example, you might need to make an Iced Mocha with cocoa, mocha flavoring and ice. You get more recipes as you go along, which makes it interesting. I had quite a bit of fun playing this one. It was a really nice change of pace.

Game review: Golden Hearts Juice Bar

Yet another restaurant themed time management game, Golden Hearts Juice Bar tries to change things up a bit by making the "restaurant" into a trendy drink bar. Unfortunately, the changes that make the juice bar possible makes the game annoyingly difficult right from the beginning. Of course, it doesn't get any easier as the levels go on. You play Kelly, a college student who is trying to each some money to continue her studies. So she takes a job at the local juice bar making milkshakes and strawberry smoothies. While this sounds like a great job, the game makes it extremely difficult by taking it out of a bar-typed setting and using a restaurant setting instead. As such, Kelly has to crank out as many drinks as she can while waiting on tables. Add in the fact that each drink takes a couple of seconds in the blender, it's not too difficult to end up with some cranky customers. You can make them happier with the house band but they seem to take an awful lot of breaks.

Also, the game setting teases you. There are things available that you can use but the customers don't want. So if you accidentally click on them, you are screwed. This includes things like lemon wedges for the drinks and slices of cake. They don't come into play until the middle of the second restaurant level.

I'm rather disappointed in the game. I wanted it to be really good. It's a great theme but it's just not used very well. If the designers had used the bar instead of seating the customers at tables, the game would be a lot easier and a lot more fun to play. I hope that they'll make a sequel to the game with a couple of minor changes. It'll be cool to have a bar-themed time management game. I think it'll bring back memories of the old Tapper games.