Developer: Firebase Industries
Publisher: Firebase Industries
Platform: 360
Arcadecraft – Review
Arcade cabinets are becoming more and more a thing of the past. Firebase Industries tries to revive that good old arcade feel with Arcadecraft. Arcadecraft is a game that revolves around you building up your own Arcadehall in the eighties. A concept that may attract plenty of gamers who want to take a trip down memory lane.
Note: Seeing this is an Xbox 360 Indie title – the game may not be available in every country.
Story:
Arcadecraft is a game that takes you back to the eighties, a period where video games were still a luxury item. (In a way it still is, but you get the picture!) You, the protagonist, happens to have the ambition of running your own arcade hall.
All of this doesn’t come cheaply, of course. You will need to pay back your loan after two years but after that it’s pretty much smooth sailing until the end of the game.
The game doesn’t really have that much of a plot to work with. Then again, the concept of Arcadecraft allows it to be simple, because it will surely get your imagination going.
Graphics:
Graphically Arcadecraft isn’t bad looking, but it lacks a decent amount of touches that would have made the game that much interesting.
You, the shopkeeper will be represented by your own Xbox Avatar. Your customers are pretty much the same story, but they will be represented by the Avatars of the other accounts on your Xbox and the people in your friends list. This immediately brings up the issue of – what if you don’t have a lot of friends? Good question son! You will see the same customers, over and over again.
This brings us directly to the next issue. Customers happen to teleport immediately behind the Arcade Cabinets to see them playing for about a second before they disappear and another customer appears out of thin air. The game would have looked so much more attractive if you actually had customers running around in your shop and see them walk up to the cabinet of their choice, or even stand in line for it to become available.
The arcade cabinets in Arcadecraft look appealing and happen to represent loads of classic games. For obvious reasons they were not allowed to use original names, but plenty of them happen to be easy to spot. Sadly the arcade cabinets brings us to the second issue of Arcadecraft. The cabinets are static objects only, meaning the animation on the screen is a single picture only. You will never see the cabinets in action, not even a short image repeating itself.
Overall, for an indie game, the game does not look bad but it could have been so much more.
Sound:
When it comes to the music of the game, there isn’t that much to judge. If you don’t want to place a jukebox in your shop, you will have to play the game without any background music. If you do, you have the option to play music from your hard disk.
The arcade cabinets happen to make a lot of noise, which actually feel quite authentic.
Gameplay:
Arcadecraft is pretty much a sim game comparable with games like Theme Park, with a lot less options to choose from.
Ingame you will start on the 1st of January 1980, and you will be able to start your own (small) arcade empire. You will need to take in account, you have to pay back a loan after a period of two years. This means you simply have to keep your shop popular and filled with good old fashioned arcade games.
When the game starts you will only have a handful of arcade cabinets to choose from, and as the months pass by you will get access to more cabinets to purchase and place. When choosing which cabinet to place you will need to take in account if it’s not dated in the year your game is and if it will make you a profit.
Buying new cabinets will increase the popularity of your shop and they will attract more customers. Also new cabinets also happen to be more popular themselves and will simply earn you more money. When keeping this in mind, you will have to occasionally sell older cabinets to replace them with newer ones.
Each month a ‘hot spot’ will appear in your shop and when you happen to be in time to place one of your cabinets on this hot spot, the cabinet will earn you more money.
As we all know, arcade cabinets happen to work when inserting coins. Unless you happen to have a cabinet with a bottomless pit, you will need to empty the coin boxes. This is pretty simple, and works by holding a button on the controller. Even though the simplicity of it, you will need to keep an eye out to do this regularly so your machines won’t be filled completely. If they are, customers aren’t able to insert coins and won’t be able to use the machine.
Of course running an arcade hall isn’t all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. You will encounter your fair share of annoying customers who will abuse your machines, power shortages and even coin slots which happen to be stuck. Each of these have a certain way of dealing with them: Annoying customers will need to be picked up and placed at the exit. Power shortages are dealt with by placing your cabinets again so you ‘plug them back in’. Last but not least, stuck coin slots are fixed by you pretty much banging your own cabinets.
The game also offers you the chance to adjust several settings, like charging more money, changing difficulties and so on. Sadly you pretty much want to leave them the way they are, because every time you change something, customers will start to complain.
Arcadecraft also has a small share of random encounters, namely collectors who want to buy retro arcade cabinets, a salesman offering you a rare cabinet (for you to buy!) and even a random kid who wants to break records on your cabinets. All of these will help your shop in one way or another.
Conclusion:
Arcadecraft is a great concept that has some flaws in its execution. The game will offer sim enthusiasts a few hours of fun. Sadly if they happen to have a lot of experience with other titles in the genre, they will also bother themselves at the same issues I’ve brought up during the review. Arcadecraft is a decent game which could have been a lot more.
Arcadecraft - Review,
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