by Emele Maisey

Created on: February 05, 2009   Last Updated: July 19, 2010

Rating 4/5

Did you ever want to be Willy Wonker, running a chocolate factory, making up new chocolate creations as well as old favourites? Well now you can in this delicious business simulation game perfect for chocoholics and entrepreneurs!

The game starts with a black and white newsreel explaining the history of the family run business, Baumeister Confectioners. Set just after WW2 in Zurich, Germany you are entrusted with running the firm for Alex while she goes and searches for her missing husband who has not returned from the war.

She warns you that the company is in trouble and it's up to you to prove yourself and make this once successful company thrive again with the aim of becoming CEO.

First you have to prove you can make chocolate. With 100 sacks of sugar and cocoa you must go to the factory and turn these two ingredients into basic chocolate bars by playing an arcade game in which you have 60 seconds to set the production rate. Aim and click to fire the ingredients at the rotating machines. For the basic chocolate bar you need to get one sugar and one cocoa into each slot. Fill a tray with the correct ingredients and it will be emptied and added to the total. The machine speeds up or slows down depending on how you do. Don't worry you can have several goes until you are happy with the result!

Once you have proved you have the chocolate factory mastered you get to sell the bars to shops, complete quests and travel the world from Tokyo to Toronto and beyond buying ingredients such as sugar, cocoa, peanuts, caramel and much more.

The unique thing about this game is that as well as creating the old favorites from the Baumeister family recipes you also get to create and name your very own scrumptious chocolates. For me that would have to be mint, nut and caramel candy bar. I wonder if people would buy it?!

Graphics are 2d with a different town scene for each country. There are some basic animations which help liven up the scene such as moving cars while a plane flies over the map scene but I would have preferred the graphics to be 3D so that I could have walked around the town and explored properly. To interact with the characters a dialog box pops up which you need to read, there are no voice-overs apart from at the start of the game.

The game can be a little overwhelming at first with the production rate, making sure you have enough ingredients and controlling the money side of things. But help is never far away with characters in the game telling you where to go and what to do to enable you to accomplish the tasks and run the business.

This simulation game is very enjoyable to play, especially if you have a sweet tooth and are a bit of an entrepreneur like me! The whole family can play which is an added bonus. The kids will be able to get a feel for running a business whilst being entertained at the same time. There is only one downfall - You will crave chocolate throughout the game!

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