Arcade Tycoon Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published February 9, 2024 · Updated February 9, 2024

Arcade Tycoon Review, Delight your guests with a huge variety of entertainment including consoles, pinball, retro, modern-day, shooters, pool, ice hockey, virtual reality, and more. Create awesome-looking themed areas by purchasing unique attractions and decorating all aspects: floors, walls, pictures, and all the required and very handy facilities.

Arcade Tycoon Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
1.4GB Download size.
Steam achievements.
Graphics settings – screen mode, and resolution.
Gameplay settings – autosave frequency, reticule style, edge panning, mouse lock, and max autosaves.
Three difficulties – Easy, normal, and hard.
Two game modes – campaign, and sandbox.
Management gameplay.
Tutorial level.
Eleven locations to unlock and play.
Save and load when you want.
You can sit there and watch the game play out.
Every machine you place needs power and you only get so much in a location.
Each level has three trophies to earn.
The game uses old-school browsers for the menu system.
You get to name or randomize your arcade names.
Easy to use drag and drop system for placing machines.
Hire staff to help customers, and fix machines.
Money earned and lost will pop up above players, workers, and machines.
Analytics lets you see what is trending at the moment so you can get the right games in.
Customers will have an emoji above their heads saying how they feel.
You can fully decorate and customize your arcades.
Emails will come through with help and warnings.
Workers can be left to their own devices or you can man manage them, either way, they earn exp and level up to get new perks.
The clock autoruns but you can open and shut the shop at will.
Different weather types can affect business.
In-depth stats for all machines and staff including how much they make, power usage, and how popular they are.
You can edit the price of food and drink.
Speed boost can be turned on and off at will.
Events like school holidays and heatwaves can happen which impact how you run your business.
At the end of the year, you have to deal with the taxman.
You have to hire cleaners, entertainers, security, etc.
At any time you can jump to a new location/level once you hit the criteria.
Can be a good little time waster.
Sandbox mode lets you set rent, and start cash which opens the game up allowing big arcades.
Excellent and sometimes humorous animations.
The best part of the sandbox mode is having everything unlocked.

Arcade Tycoon Review Cons:

The game is very loose in regards to tutorials and leaves you to go through the many daunting menus and numbers.
Takes a while to get going.
Cannot remap controls.
It’s not obvious so I never saw it but you have to manually click into each machine and turn them on.
The game just starts in the campaign and you’re not sure what you are doing and get little feedback.
Uses a lot of the same character models.
The bios of workers repeat constantly and don’t feel unique.
You only see the one angle of your arcade so in essence you have half an arcade to decorate.
Putting down a floor is on a tile-by-tile basis.
Mission goals are not clearly shown and instead hidden in menus.
Hard to click on workers at times.
The gameplay just feels repetitive and starting a new arcade feels the same method over and over.
You get little motivation to unlock all the trophies on an arcade and instead just do the ones needed for new locations and machines.
The arcades are very small.
Cannot choose the location or them of the world in sandbox mode.
The AI path finding of the workers is not always good.