Well, i'm calling it. I can't be arsed to get the final Silver trophy. i beat the final map with a working arcade that generates profit. I was shy of 400k of the 1million i needed and frankly i don't care. I beat Arcade Tycoon.
Overall I did have fun with it. the idea of building/designing your arcade bring out my nostalgia for those places and visually it looks nice and appealing to play. Rewarding gameplay as i convert empty buildings into temples of fun and excitement. The Single player campaign you are restricted to the play area and tasked with completing enough challenges to unlock stuff like the next level or more amusements. The more amusements you unlock, the more you can cater to the tastes of your patrons. As you progress, the maps get bigger, more oddly shaped and expensive to rent (so you need to have a higher profit margin each time. I played it on normal and only the last 2 or 3 maps proved tricky and only at the start. Tbh my main strategy was mostly to spend as much time in shallow debt early on. I'll be buggered if i was going to lose investible cash on rent, it was smarter to use the cash to invest in developing/building the arcade (and in turn more money).
before i go onto the issues with the game, lets have a look at some of my arcades:
See a pattern? if you're going to play the meta, you have top opt for certain designs. The arcade carpet for example maybe the most expensive, but also the prettiest. I tried to have more variety but i was playing the meta so i just spammed the same designs. The patrons lack of taste ensured i got away with hideous carpets and wall paper.
Speaking of designs, whilst there are a whole assortment of things to decorate the arcade, the same problem again: play meta or have a visually "unappealing park" and the stats mean that somethings are absolutely worthless to invest in. in my case, i focused on the skeleton as the knights are 1000+ more yet barely increase. Other objects are more expensive but don't increase the stat. But the most shocking is perhaps the lack of stuff. Where are the metal railings? it just feels like an assortment of random bits or themed bits that just don't go toget. Like Farm, pirate, knights, a tank etc. If there had been a thematic requirement it might have spiced up designs (ie: sci fi arcade amusements should only be decorated with modern designs) or perhaps complementary objects boosted the appeal rating or something.
i could say similar issues with the number of arcades and amenities. For example, for food, the best good is pizza shacks. The problem is that you won't get variety ratings with pizza alone and all the lesser food shops (vending machines, burgers, ice cream) have little returns. i would have prefered if there was some way to upgrade the food/drink etc so that i could buy different stuff. But instead everyone is stuck with pizza and lemonade.
i do have some comments when it comes to gameplay and design elements. Too often i felt like i was exploiting's the game to win. one of my common exploits is without a doubt, spamming stars to completing secondary missions for cash. They might not do much for my appeal, that said its an easy challenge and cheap.
the other issues include a fixed camera which means that i can't decorate the walls in the SE corner. So the bottom corner is always going to be less appealing. the other big issue is the fixed camera i would love to deploy more stuff in the bottom corner but large objects (like the rides) take up too much space and even with transparency its not easy to build. Plus its absolutely naff to look at the back of a shop.
The new UI is pretty dire. Too much scrolling. I think it was tailored for steam deck and/or switch. Shame we couldn't have a more kb+m friendly version. I would have liked more visual bars/windows so i can keep track of stuff easier.
Technical issues. The game kept crashing. Ok i may have lost maybe a little time, but it gets annoying. But the biggest, biggest gripe? The bug where every time you load you run the risk of not being able to build anything. For some reason the floor disappears or classed as unbuildable. its easily rectified by loading the save game (assuming you didn't save the bug) or loading another save game. My advice? make multiple saves and be prepared to load your game x2 just in case.
So... would i recommend the game? i still think its good, but there could have been more that could have been done with it. i got it off my brothers collection (via family collection) so i got to play it for free. it had to be doing something right if i played it for 40 hrs.