For some reason, I find time management games ridiculously addictive and burn through a lot of them in times of boredom on my mobile phone. Diner Dash was my earliest recollection of becoming consumed by this genre almost twenty years ago. There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of this type of game on the Xbox though, so naturally, I was instantly intrigued when I saw Food Truck Tycoon in the games coming soon section. This is a game that will provide you with a fair few hours of fun for such a low price point. Now available from Baltoro Games at a stupendously low price point of just £3.99 at the time of writing, Food Truck Tycoon is now available across the Xbox family of consoles.

Introduction

Whilst the game has been available for a good few years on Nintendo Switch, it is now time to shine on Xbox. The premise is very simple and that is to run your own food truck and take sole responsibility for the operation, cooking and serving of the customers who are hoping to fill their stomachs. It’s a meaty package for the already mentioned low cost with 150 levels and over 50 different dishes to concoct and serve to those rumbling bellies. The fantastic thing about this game is the levels only take a few minutes each so it is the perfect game to pick up and play and have fun with.

Gameplay

You’ll have a brief introduction to the control scheme and how to function in each area of your kitchen which does come across as pretty fiddly at first. Once you play through several levels though you’ll become comfortable with banging drinks out, plating up sausages and corndogs and chucking some side salads on plates. I found myself using the D-Pad the majority of the time as the analogue stick was a little too sensitive when trying to be speedy with serving customers.

Some functions are performed with shoulder and bumper buttons, for instance, the soda machine is the click of the LB button to pour a coke and LT to serve. Cooking sausages and corndogs is a case of pressing A to throw them into the hot pans and keeping an eye on them for when they are ready. Bread and side salads are simply clicking and taking it to a plate of your choosing. It all sounds like a breeze on paper, but when you have several customers awaiting different meals and drinks, you have to get your skates on. Don’t forget the ketchup and mustard either!

Make Mistakes & Learn From It

Occasionally you may take your eye off the ball and get things wrong and there are ways to rectify this. For instance, if you don’t stop the soda machine from pouring then the drinks will overflow which causes waste and you’ll have to dispose of it and lose revenue. The same will happen if you leave food in the pan for too long, it will be frazzled and then need to be binned which slows down your time management. Whilst it’s not the end of the world, it can hamper your end result and lose you all important cash for upgrades

Improve Your Kitchen

As your progress through the levels, you’ll have the opportunity to dive into the shop and purchase several upgrades. These can improve the capacity of plates you can have on the go, the amount of food you can prepare at once and also cosmetic upgrades to the decor of the outside of your truck. All of these can be purchased with the in-game currency you have accumulated throughout your time with the game.

Graphics & Audio

The graphics aren’t the star of the show here, they are extremely basic and akin to something you’d be presented with on a mobile phone or tablet. For the style of the game, I wasn’t expecting all bells and whistles but the transition from Nintendo Switch to Xbox has been done exceptionally well. There are no bugs or glitches in sight and nor would I expect there to be from such a small download. There is some in-game music that I did find quite repetitive after some time, this can be switched off or changed in the settings menu. Audio effects were brilliant with everything you do sounding as they would as if you were doing the job yourself, the sizzle of sausages on hot oil, the squirty sound of a ketchup bottle and the buzzing from the soda machine.

In Conclusion

Food Truck Tycoon definitely scratched the itch for me after not playing a time management game for some time. I was addicted to this from the very beginning and despite some fiddly controls, it holds up extremely well for less than the price of a pint in the pub. I was obsessed with trying to achieve three stars in all the core levels and then the same for the special levels which come at a much higher difficulty with much more going on. I’m yet to finish everything on offer here but I managed to unlock all the levels, and upgrades and play around with the majority of dishes that could be served up. Whilst replayability would be quite low if you managed to ace through every single stage, there is a good 10-12 hours of gameplay here for perfectionists with reasonably easy achievements for those gamerscore junkies.