The days when arcades where the ultimate way to experience gaming may be long gone, but I still love to visit them when I can. They're a of staple holiday resorts where I live and there are a few video game museums that double as arcade halls. Getting to play through classic games in a setting like that is incredible. You have to try it sometime to understand.
So when I saw Arcade Tycoon on Steam, I knew I had to give it a try. And now that it's out of Early Access, let's give this management sim a proper review.
Arcade Tycoon is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a tycoon-style game in which you manage a brand new arcade. You're in charge of purchasing machines and amenities, decorating and furnishing the building, as well as hiring the staff to operate it.
The core gameplay is exactly what you'd expect. You spend your funds to buy stuff from a menu, then watch customers pour in hoping to have a great time. They purchase tokens, food, and drinks, then go about playing on your machines. Each customer can be clicked on to get an overview of their experiences. Here they'll comment on just about anything and everything. How long the lines for their favorite games are, whether the food is worth the price, if they like the decoration or not. These opinions are then also compiled into an overall happiness rating, which is subdivided into many different categories.
From there it's a loop of improvement. You raise new funds to expand or upgrade your arcade while monitoring those happiness ratings for feedback. People might like the games you have available, but they are so popular that the lines are unbearable. Do you invest in even more machines so that the lines get split up? What if trends move on and now nobody wants to play that anymore? Maybe you make the popular games harder to shorten how long people can play them or raise their token cost. Or you could make other nearby games cheaper and easier instead. There are a lot of options and things to manage, giving you ample freedom to run your arcade the way you want.
Staff, meanwhile, help keep your arcade running smoothly. Technicians (proactively) repair machines, preventing them from breaking down and needing more expensive fixes. Cleaners take care off trash for you, entertainers liven up the place, and security guards take care off troublemakers. Every staff member has their own stats, perks, and an overall level that increases as they accrue experience. With each level up you can either upgrade their overall stats or pick out a new perk. Keeping in mind that leveling up will also increase their wages.
Work can also be rough at times. When a staff member is under a lot of pressure, they may develop flaws that impede their effectiveness. You could fire them, but that means hiring a fresh-faced rookie that needs to be trained from scratch.
There are also plenty of secondary factors to manage. Arcade machines draw a lot of power, so you have to purchase wattage ahead of time and keep an eye on your needs. Exceed your power limits and you'll suffer a blackout, which can cause serious damage to your machines. You can also research new tech. Doing so costs stars, which are awarded anytime someone has a great time with one of your games. Some of these are passive bonuses like permanent discounts, while others unlock new features and options. Such as an entire marketing mechanic whereby you can spend money to (hopefully) draw in more paying customers.
Even if you got things running smoothly, there are random events to shake up your day-to-day business. You may get robbed by a gang of thieves or have aliens show up at your arcade. Heatwaves and birthday parties act as stress tests for your business or you could catch an unexpected windfall.
Arcade Tycoon may be an indie game, but it's rich in features. It has all the nuances and depth that you'd expect from even the genre greats. Barring a few notable absences, that is. You can't rotate the screen for one thing, which means it's locked at set isometric angle. This means you're only able to decorate half the walls of your arcade and it's possible to block your own view. Place one oversized food stall against the back wall and suddenly you can't see half the place anymore. It's also not possible to add walls, making it impossible to partition spaces in interesting ways. No creating a walled off bathroom or creating corridors to steer people around. This is most apparent in sandbox mode, where you are always bound to perfectly square spaces.
The campaign mode offers more interesting building types for your arcades as well as overall objectives to work towards. Unfortunately it is very restrictive. The early missions are a chore to complete as you're left with tiny buildings and painfully little money. On several maps I scored a straight 0 for food and drinks because the stalls are so big I couldn't possibly fit them in. A lot of games are also blocked off until you complete optional objectives, making the early stages particularly dull as you don't get anything to work with. This does improve down the line, but most people will want to stick with sandbox mode. There's little in the way of storytelling after the tutorial anyway so you're not missing much.
I will also say that Arcade Tycoon is most difficult right at the start. Machines are expensive and it's comparatively hard to get a stream of income going. Remember, customers don't pay to play on the machines. They buy tokens upfront and then spend forever milling about in your arcade, spending little to no extra money. What profits you make are then regularly consumed at the end of the month when wages and rent are due. Or they get annihilated dealing with random events and other setbacks. It's easy to then get trapped in a loop of plunging into debt, spending all month crawling out of it, then being put back into the red before you can buy any improvements at all.
My golden tip would be to check the objectives screen constantly. There are often easy tasks among them that give you a quick influx of cash. On my latest save I got a challenge to trigger a birthday party right after I just opened my new arcade. A full hall right away, lots of free marketing, AND I got paid a bunch of cash for "surviving" the event. Awesome!
Arcade Tycoon is a solid recommendation for anyone interested in Tycoon-style games or who has nostalgic memories of playing in arcades themselves. It realizes the fantasy of running your own arcade and, while it can be too challenging at times, remains superbly fun throughout. I'll definitely come back to this game more often.
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