3/5: Fun, but frustration and monotony warrant this as only a rental.
DEVELOPER(S):
- Melesta
NOTE: Alawar Entertainment and Melesta have formed Alawar Melesta, a game development division of Alawar.
Premise: You've got plots of land on the outskirts of the city, and now it's time to convert them into farms! At first you can only harvest and sell fresh products (somehow that's disappointing to you, no, really), but later on you'll be able to produce pizza (you're filled with rapture!), the staple food of NYC.
Gameplay: Every level has a specific objective—earn two-thousand dollars in hand, make 20 French pizzas, et cetera, and along with this is a timer, counting the very seconds you spend playing the level. Accomplishing the level's goals within a set period of time earns you a [colour-coded] ranking, and finishing every level gold scores you a gold trophy. There are a number of trophies in the game, including one that is given to players who take their time playing. And of course, there is a trophy for earning every other trophy before it.
The game all starts with water, which is stored in your well. If you have some water and you click the ground, grass will sprout. Your livestock depends on grass, and if they get too hungry (you'll tell by the chain of blue stars shadowing them) they will starve to death. And die. Forever. While it sounds relatively simple, thinking about it I've never seen another time-management game so rooted in the food chain.
While nourishing your livestock you will also have to collect, create, and sell products if you plan on making any sort of profit whatsoever. To collect a product, all you have to do is click on it and it's instantly stored in your store house. Let the product sit around too long and it disappears. Creating a product is slightly more complicated; you have to have all the needed ingredients before you can start up your machines. After that, you just have to wait for the process to be finished. Upgrades may be purchased for machines, allowing for faster processing and the capacity to make more than one sack of bread at a time. You have limited storage space, so it's not wise to become a pack rat.
Occasionally at predefined times, a panda (or multiple panda) will fall out of the sky and wreak havoc on your farm. As friendly as your livestock think the bear is, not even showing the most remote signs of fear of the rampaging beast, the panda is bad news. Should a panda come in contact with any of your livestock, the poor chicken (or whatever has come in contact with the thing) will be blown into the air Team Rocket style. Containing the panda involves creating a (fully constructed) cage around it, which involves constant clicking of the panda. The panda can be collected and sold just like any other product, but also takes up a lot of space in your store house and on your truck.
To sell products, you click on your truck and load your selected products. Once you've loaded your truck, you can send it off to the city. After that, it's only a matter of time until it gets back. Your truck also has limited room, and on top of all that it's as slow as hell until you buy an upgrade for it, so even the decisions of choosing what to load and when to sell have to be made strategically.
Though is no "Endless" mode in this game, any level could be played indefinitely as long as you threw the level's goals to the winds. However, even playing like this would not be equal to playing "endlessly," as specific levels have specific machines available to them. For example, it is not possible to purchase a pizza-making machine in the beginning levels.
Graphics: While not as sharp as I wish all games were, the graphics aren't something to belittle at all. Almost everything has been produced in 3D computer graphics (though everything in the game has been prerendered), and the animations are seamless.
Sound: Through each and every level plays some lovely jazzy lounge music, though unfortunately that really is the only track the game plays while you're actually playing. Thankfully the track does not get repetitive too easily. While each and every sound in the game is high quality, I can't say that the SFX maintain their novelty as long as the music can. Probably the most annoying sound in the game is the panda's roar, which loops over and over and over again until you catch it. It doesn't grate against my ears, but surely after ninety levels anyone would agree it did get old.
Overall: Farm Frenzy: Pizza Party's game mechanics are unique and a lot of fun, and thanks to the game's "endless" timer anyone can play by any pace. However, thanks to features such as a lack of an "Endless" play mode and animals that absolutely cannot fear rampaging panda (I can't tell you how many times I've had to restart a level because the untimely loss of a chicken cost me a trophy; God knows how anyone with a worse case of OCD would fare in this game!) to me personally seriously detract from the game. Thankfully playing is still fun enough to somewhat null the monotony of the game's soundtrack.
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