Developer: InImages
Publisher: InImages
Platform: PC, Switch, iOS, Android
Tested on: Switch
Car Mechanic Manager – Review
Ever dreamed of running your own garage? Well, if you work on cars and you are the neighborhood mechanic, you will probably feel like the local shop. Sometimes games that simulate this get created and make for some interesting titles such as Car Mechanic Simulator but others would rather do all the managing. In this Switch title you get to be the manager and a sweet little girl puts all her hope in you to make her dreams come true.
Story
The story begins with a poor girl that works her hands to the bone at a shop where she gets zero recognition from her boss. At a certain point, she decides to start her own garage and leaves the workplace. You get assigned as the new boss and after a short tutorial, you will have to manage her work and the workplace on your own. There isn’t much story apart from you helping the garage grow, it would have been cool to see you hire more people and start your own brand.
Graphics
At first glance, Car Mechanic Manager looks like a title that has been ported directly from a mobile game. These thoughts are strengthened by the simple overlay that seems to fit well on a handheld. However, this overlay proves to be quite clunky when playing with a controller. The developers should have added a mouse cursor to the game to make it more fluent but more about that in gameplay. Overall graphics are hand-drawn and this has (together with the overall look and feel of the game) a very friendly vibe to it. It is a game that you would preferably give kids to play as it seems way too childish for teens or adults. Animations are simple and feel lacking for a car game as there isn’t much depth to vehicles or buildings.
Sound
As generic as the graphics are, the same can be said about the sound design. There is a very boring song looped on the background and the sound effects come straight from one of those free mobile games. The game could have gotten some bonus points if the developers would have invested some effort into creating a nice soundtrack and some good effects, yet it feels like a port with no smoothening done to it.
Gameplay
Car Mechanic Simulator is a management game in which you have to lead a garage to a wealthy future. The story starts with a young girl being mistreated at her former job. She leaves the place, starts on her own and as she is a great mechanic but no manager, she decides to hire you to make sure everything runs smoothly. It all begins with a small tutorial that teaches you the complex ropes of managing a business. As you must make the right decisions, expand the business and invest in advertising, there will be a lot of planning involved. At first, you only get the simple jobs like changing wheels and washing cars, but after saving up some money, you can upgrade existing facilities and allow for more work to be done on the vehicles. If you want to take the risk and flip cars yourself, you can buy some junk fixer-upper and sell it with a profit. This is the core gameplay in a nutshell.
While controls are simple, they are far from user-friendly. Navigating in menus is very tedious, which could have been fixed by just using a cursor instead of this bad snap system that doesn’t work half of the time. The game seems interesting at first but the poorly optimized controls will give you headaches and stress. This makes split-second decisions impossible (and they need to happen when quickly completing tasks) which slows down and messes up the whole process.
The game has a few simple mechanics in place; you can earn money by either taking on jobs for clients that need their car fixed or buy and sell used cars on your own. Jobs yield almost no profit and as flipping cars isn’t much better, you will notice that there is a serious grind to get any progress in the game. There are a handful of buildings to own and you can expand your empire as you see fit but you are limited to the (large) building space. However, due to the slow progress and bad controls, not many players will see the company thrive.
As the story is limited and you just get dropped into a sandbox-like environment after the tutorial, there isn’t much to keep you interested to play this title for longer periods of time. Some people with mental quirks will love the simple repetitive gameplay or maybe little children can be entertained by this, but in its overall execution, the game lacks everywhere.
Conclusion
Car Mechanic Simulator looks and feels like a badly ported mobile game. With its colorful yet bland graphics, boring sounds and horrible controls, it doesn’t bring much interesting to the table. There is no story progression and due to the slow progress of earning money, chances are really high that only after a few stressful minutes, the game gets uninstalled and you move on to something better.
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