Developer: DNA ARMY GAMING
Publisher: DNA ARMY GAMING
Release Date: August 30, 2022
Steam Page: FAST FOOD SHOP ONLINE
FAST FOOD SHOP ONLINE is advertised as a solo or multiplayer (up to 16 players) pizzeria simulator in which the main objective is to keep customers happy by completing their orders on time, with the difficulty gradually increasing. To counteract the difficulty, you may upgrade your shop. It is also necessary to buy produce from time-to-time. While running a pizzeria with so many other players is an interesting concept, FAST FOOD SHOP ONLINE falls short of meeting expectations. Unfortunately, there are numerous faults that must be addressed before considering purchasing this game.
First, there are a few bugs that detract from the experience. When playing in online mode, the dough maker will become out of sync between players. Initially, it appears to be a shared batch of dough for pizza crust, but over time, the second player was unable to make pizzas as they no longer had any dough to do so, despite repeated attempts to replenish it.
Another unfortunate bug is the volume setting. It is only accessible from the main menu, but even if the volume is lowered or muted, the setting resets to the default once you enter the game. As jarring as that is, it is significantly more frustrating when you take into account the one tune that loops throughout the game. At first, it's a pleasant little melody, if a bit ill-fitting, but after hearing it repeated over and over again, it becomes unbearable to listen to.
While not a bug, the means of communication are limited as well. For a game that encourages hosting large lobbies, there is no in-game text chat to speak of. This could leave out people who aren't able to voice chat with one another and foster miscommunication while working on orders. Additionally, there are a couple of typos scattered throughout the interface, such as "firends" on the main menu or "worng order" during the game. These are not always glaringly obvious, however, they do come across as careless.
Another area that needs work is the representation of crafted pizzas. The customers' orders and the pictures on the shop marquee don't match the pizzas you're actually making. For some reason, when you apply an ingredient to a pizza, it only places a single topping whereas everywhere else in the game they resemble fully fleshed out pizzas. It only took one attempt to add additional ingredients to realise that this is just how the developers chose to represent the recipe. It's a bit off-putting and never truly looks right.
There is no save function to the game, which is fine as it isn't necessary anyway. After upgrading everything, there's nothing else to do except endlessly make the same pizzas that you started with. Only now, with no option to raise the difficulty. And that's another thing—the proposed challenge that the game offers is non-existent. One of the upgrades is to increase advertising for your pizzeria in order to pull customers. So, the difficulty ramping up with time as the Steam page suggests is entirely player driven. This causes the upgrades that you strive towards to feel like vain attempts to pad the game with content.
Besides these caveats, additional areas could have been expanded upon. There is plenty of freedom to explore in the thirty seconds between each new customer (before your first advertising upgrade), however, the player can only stay within certain boundaries as the game will automatically teleport them back to the play area if they wander too far from the pizzeria. This seemed a bit strange, considering the map was so intricately designed. It does have some nice visual touches, but decoration does not equal content. This feels like a missed opportunity. If it had been polished to its full potential, it might very well haven been a game that we would have spent a lot of time with.
The scenery is charming and interesting to look at, and the surrounding shops are just begging to be utilised. For example, players could go to the neighbouring produce shop to buy their own supplies, rather than ordering them from a computer and having them delivered by a van that arrives and disappears in an instant. A clothing shop could have been implemented to allow player customisation. The pizzeria itself could have been optimised as well—seating for customers to dine in, requiring someone to bus the tables, delivering pizzas around the map, and so much more. Such features could have made the vast player lobby feel worthwhile. Unfortunately, this is not an early access game. There is no indication that the developers ever plan to revisit this project.
A quick search of the developer's other games show a pattern of similar behaviour: releasing games that are intriguing at face value, only for many of the reviews to reflect our own comments about this game. There is clearly some amount of effort put into these creations, but it doesn't do them justice when they are released so haphazardly. The game is rather cheap at least, yet it doesn't feel like you get your money's worth. It's disappointing, because the concept this game presents aligns with our interests. It just happens to fall flat of our expectations. That being said, with all these issues, we can't recommend FAST FOOD SHOP ONLINE.
Who should play this game: Those who don't mind a simple and repetitive game, or patient people who can find their own fun (such as roleplayers)Controller Support: No, left and right joystick (movement and rotation), as well as jumping are incorporated. However, nothing else is
Steam Achievements: No
Steam Trading Cards: No
DLC Available: No