[quote][i]This is the [b]45th[/b] review of the Steam Redlight series, a series where I purposely seek out negatively or controversially rated games on Steam to see if they're as bad as the Internet says they are. It's accompanied by a video review that can be found [b][url=https://youtu.be/Hf_C9G0rc8k]here[/url][/b].[/i][/quote]
[b]In summary, I can recommend this game, and as a numerical score I’d give it a 7/10[/b]. The game is visually consistent and there’s a lot of small details in its sound design that give the game a complete and holistic feeling. Backed by an intuitive and engaging gameplay experience with minimal problems makes this game a pleasure to experience. The game has some minor setbacks with how vulnerable it is to some in-game exploits, some controls and interactions that could be minorly improved on, and one achievement that just [i]keeps[/i] getting away from me in a very frustrating way.
[h2]Introduction[/h2]
In Game Time Glizzys, you play as a reputable hot-dog stand operator that has come back from vacation to find your rink-side restaurant in disrepair after entrusting to some lad named Ace. Your appliances are busted and are in-need of repair, your stand’s reputation has been dragged through the mud by reviewers, and the bank [i]really[/i] wants all $1,000 it loaned you some years back in seven days.
The gameplay is really straightforward, and because over half your shop is busted up you can only deliver basic hot dogs on warmed bread, or a hot dog on a bun with ketchup and mustard. Once a day, you can opt to repair / re-enable one of your appliances to expand your shops’ offerings including more toppings, drinks, and a side. All-in-all, this is likely to over-complicate your workflow since now the orders will get way more diverse, but in turn you’ll end up making more money. If you want to bust your back, you can enable the second register to take twice as many orders and that turns this game from a casual cooking simulator into a hyper-focused, precision-point, clicking cookery since you’re a one-person gig.
Each playthrough (of seven days) takes about ~45 minutes, and after four and a half hours I got six out of the seven available achievements. We’ll talk about that seventh one later. Other than the sixth achievement, the game was a joy to play, and I’ll tell you why.
[h2]The Good[/h2]
The game has a lot of good things going for it, and I don’t think any element is any better than the other because they’re all so high-up. To start with the visual design, we’ve got models and assets that are fitting and appropriate, from the ingredients, to the kitchen, to the patrons, to the hockey rink your glizzy stand resides in. There’s some great small details such as the change in color for warmed glizzys, or the hockey puck that appears for a quick second if it damages any of your appliances.
In the realm of the audio design, the game has a lot of care put into it in this category as well. I think the voice acting is all sound for the limited performances that were demanded, from the phone calls to the overhead announcer to the sound effects that play at each gameplay element’s appearance. The varying announcements from the overhead announcer about scoring, fights, which team wins or loses all add a considerable amount of liveliness to the game.
Then lastly, I wanted to commend the gameplay. It’s highly intuitive, but there’s a quick little tutorial that comes up to make sure you get rolling. There’s a lot of things to engage with which will cause your shifts to go quickly — you might not even notice that they can get up to six to eight minutes long! If you’re feeling a little [i]shady[/i], you can use the same tablet you’d use to order appliance repairs to send Ace to do some bidding on your behalf. You can send him to the competitors in the rink to cause a power outage, break their equipment, or even commit a robbery. Your competitors are capable of the same and if they see you succeed, well, they’ll do what they can to make sure you suffer from success. Who knows if that hockey puck that slammed your fully-loaded glizzy-grill was [i]actually[/i] an accident? There’s little time to think about, just yoink those wieners off the floor and throw ‘em back on before anybody notices. Not like anybody cares, but you know… for posterity.
[h2]The Questionable[/h2]
The smallest of the offenders is that this game has two exploits that will aid in the players’ favor — one should come with context that this game gives you twenty seconds to prep your stand at the start of every shift before the orders roll in. If you’re receiving a phone call that day, you can just [i]not[/i] answer the phone, and you’ll have as long to prep as you’d like. I found myself using this because otherwise the prep times do not feel long enough and it boiled down to a simple setup of me going in the walk-in, take a step out, throw hot dogs or buns onto the floor in front of the grill for reloading mid-shift. The second is that you don’t actually have to warm or cook the glizzys — as long as you have a warm bun, you can put them directly from the package into the bun and your customers do not exercise any restraint and will ask for three more plain dogs.
After the exploits, there’s only some minor inconveniences caused by controls — I’ll pick on the tablet first; it’s kind of rough that you [b]have[/b] to use keyboard keys to go back to the home screen or put the tablet down. It’d be great if these were clickable buttons, or if at the very least Escape puts down the tablet since it has no functionality when the tablet is up. Another one is that there isn’t a [b]Restart[/b] button in the pause menu. This button would be helpful because otherwise you’re closing and starting the game back up to start another run. On the smaller side, if you want to pay your loan in one go you’re stuck holding the (+) button for a minute or two since you can’t type in numbers and there’s no ‘pay in full’ option. Then lastly there’s the serving bell — you can hit this bell a [b]bunch[/b] of times and it’ll cause a “Failed Order” on each press, even if your shop is closed This isn’t really a big deal, but it’d be nice if the bell was inactive when there’s no customers active so it doesn’t accidentally ruin a Perfect Game run.
Then lastly, my biggest point of contention was based around the perfect game run. I tried several times to get this achievement but something [i]always[/i] went wrong. Sometimes it was a [i]really[/i] impatient customer, sometimes I’d be working [i]too[/i] fast and send the order early, but there was this one time where I did not know what happened. I didn’t notice the failed order until I got to the shift summary screen but I got my reasoning several hours later. While editing my review video, I found that at the end of Day 6, while I was paying off the loan [b]after the shop closed[/b], someone came to the stand without me noticing, and since I was holding that (+) button for a minute or two, they left before I could notice ‘em.
[h2]The End[/h2]
Anywhoo, that’s it. This game was a blast, and I hope this review helped tip the scales out there. There’s a great amount of care put into a game that’s priced at $5 USD, and despite the frustrations I still think it was worth the time I put into it. Now that I have some understanding of how I failed that last run, I’ll probably come back for that seventh achievement sometime soon. I just [i]won’t[/i] pay off my loan this time because the bank can stuff it. I’ll take the $1,000 I should’ve given them and open up a baked potato stand next.
[quote][i]If you’re into curator groups, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41665876/]we have one of those[/url]. Did you like this written review? Check out the spoiler-free video review for visual and audio compliments to the review:[/i][/quote] https://youtu.be/Hf_C9G0rc8k
