by Brad Sylvester

Created on: June 06, 2008   Last Updated: December 06, 2010

Flower Stand Tycoon by TikGames is an entertaining and simple business simulation game. As the business partner of a botanical researcher, you are responsible for outfitting the business with equipment, selecting inventory, choosing sales promotions, and the day to day selling of flowers and related merchandise. You must increase your profits and build market share relative to the computer controlled competitors. There are reports detailing how you did each day to help you make decisions for the next day. Funding your business partner's research provides new and exotic flowers for you to sell. That's about all there is to it.

As far as innovation, the game is quite similar to other games you may have heard of - Lemonade Stand Tycoon, for example. Game play is easy and there's a quick tutorial that provides all the information you need to get started.

The graphics are cartoon-like and mostly static drawings. The only real movement is the little people lining up to buy flowers each day. You can tell how the potential customers react to your stand by the symbols in the thought-bubbles that appear over their heads after they interact with the flower stand. Intuitive symbols indicate whether they are a satisfied customer, they think your prices are too high, or they did not like your selection of merchandise.

Flower Stand Tycoon has pleasant, if plain, background music and the usual transaction sound effects such as the cash register ringing up a sale. Nothing too fancy, but anything more would have been out of place in this game.

Despite the simplicity, TikGames' Flower Stand Tycoon is fun to play. It is at least on par with the current crop of online games you'd find at places like Pogo.com or Yahoo! Games. It has the additional benefit of being resident on the computer so you don't need to be online to play.

Flower Stand Tycoon offers a free 1 hour demo version. It plays just like the full version, but lasts for 60 minutes of playing time which is long enough for you to decide if you'd like to pay $19.99 for the security key to unlock the game for unlimited play. On a scale of 1-5, Flower Stand Tycoon rates a solid 3.

System requirements, as you'd expect are not too demanding. The game requires DirectX 8.1 or better, and Windows 98, XP, 2000, or Vista. A Pentium III with 1.0 GB processor speed and a paltry 256 MB of RAM are all that's needed. Flower Stand Tycoon is a direct download and installs on only 45 MB of hard drive space and requires only 16 MB of RAM on your 3D graphics card.

Download the free demo version of Flower Stand Tycoon today and try it for yourself. It is certainly fun for an hour and if you like it and want to continue with more advanced items gained through growing the business and continuing research, then just $19.99 makes it yours forever without any additional downloads or CDs to be shipped in the mail.

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