Ice Cream Craze PC Game Review

Customers scream for ice cream and you need to serve ‘em up the way they like it. No matter the weather, we love our ice cream. Ice Cream Craze gives you a chance to have your ice cream without worrying about it affecting your shape.

Jan’s parents want to sell their ice cream shop and enjoy living easy. She asks to take over the shop. Mom and Dad agree to let her buy the store if she (us) can successfully manage the store for 60 days. One day, of course, equals one level. In this time management game, Jan fills ice cream orders based on customer requests. She pick up the ingredients from conveyor belts and put them in the right order. Someone asking for chocolate and vanilla must receive it in that order and not the other way around or else the dessert goes in the recycling bin.

If you make mistakes — and I make plenty — try to undo the order by putting each ingredient on plates. However, the game gives you only one plate and you must buy the other three. Four plates helps a lot, but later levels easily call for orders with over four ingredients. So use those plates wisely or you’ll recycle the order and start over.

What drives me batty (hence the appropriate title for the game — makes me crazy) is when I think I deliver an order or put it somewhere, I find that I’m carrying two orders on top of each other. Once an order is complete, there’s no undoing it and both go to waste.

The upgrade store shows up after completing a level. Don’t expect to have all the upgrades early in the game or even halfway. It takes time to earn enough money for each upgrade and much longer for the big items like faster machines. Upgrades in some games come too easy, but this one does a fine job in ensuring upgrades spread out through the game.

Jan’s moving too slow is another element of the “craze” in Ice Cream Craze— it makes a gal crazy. I try to get her to drink all the espresso she can. Coffee speed is the speed that should be normal. The game drags for the first one-third of the game and improves as you add speed upgrades.

Chaining — clicking ahead a few steps — works, but nothing indicates the clicks took effect. Too many times, I find myself backtracking or redoing the level because a click didn’t take.

For the first time — to my knowledge — players must pick up the cash within seconds or else the money blinks and disappears forever losing your chance to increase your profits. It annoys me at first — I get the hang of it later. Some might value the extra challenge while others start pulling out their hair.

Ice Cream Craze serves up a couple scoops of fun with a ’50s theme. It isn’t the best time management game, but it’s also not the worst — more like somewhere in the middle, an average game. The only thing you won’t get out of an hour of free play is a feel for the speed. It takes more than an hour for the game to move faster.