March 7th, 2008 by PCG

Game Review: Coffee Rush

Oh no! The overly-aggressive Smokestack Coffee Company is stamping out local competition with its overpriced coffee that tastes like mud. Um, that's the Smokestack company - though you might have thought they go by another name. Ahem.

In Anarchy Entertainment's Coffee Rush, it's up to you to open your own coffee shop and take back all the areas of town dominated by the evil corporation's trendy cafes. Up for the challenge? While it lacks in the originality department, Coffee Rush can be as addictive as the drink itself.

Imagine a puzzle game board like Bejeweled, but instead of an 8x8 grid of gemstones, such as diamonds and rubies, in Coffee Rush you're playing with coffee beans, milk, sugar, whipped cream, ice cubes and other coffee-related items. The idea is to build a recipe as indicated on the right-hand side of the screen, which involves swapping adjacent items so that you create a line of 3 or more identical items, vertically or horizontally. This causes the items to disappear and make room for additional items to fall down onto the board.

A "Hey Hey Cafe Latte" recipe, for example, might require 7 coffee beans, six milks, five sugars and four lightning bolts. Once you meet this minimum, the drink is ready and you can click on it to give to the waiting customer.

Similar to "time management" games, you must make a certain amount of money by the end of the day to move onto the next level or else you need to repeat the day.

But a word of warning for those who've played Gamenauts', Burger Rush: Coffee Rush is essentially the same game but with coffee-related items instead of fast food ingredients. If I'm not mistaken, however, Coffee Rush does offer more special items (that, when used in a chain, can help you prepare your drinks faster), more combos (you can add sandwiches and other items with a drink for extra cash), more treats to hold off impatient customers (such as donuts and muffins) and more bonuses awarded for strategic matching...

The problem is that the Smokestack owners adhere to the philosophy of low quality and high price, which makes their customers mad. Moreover, they pollute the atmosphere of the whole city, and that is surely not the best way to do business. So your are proposed to challenge the unconscientious corporation and drive them out of the city and of the industry.

Start your own coffee business with a small shop in Suburbia and expand your coffee empire to all the 7 neighborhoods, where you'll meet lots of unique customers with their unique peculiarities.

As I already said, the game is a combination of match 3 and time-management genres. Your main task, as in most time-managements, is to serve all the customers coming to your shop in the shortest time possible in order to earn the highest tips. Customers lose their patience if you do not work fast enough, and they can even leave if you linger with their order for too long. At the stage of fulfilling the orders you will be offered traditional match 3 game play, for each recipe consists of certain ingredients needed to prepare it, such as coffee seeds, milk or sugar. In order to get the ingredients you will have to match them on the playfield. The game features 3 difficulty levels to choose from and 3 goals for each level to reach. It's enough to achieve Level Goal to pass it, but it may be quite a challenge to reach Expert and Super Goals, so there is no limit for perfection...

You don't have to be a coffee freak to enjoy this fabulous game that is a cross between match 3 play and time management games.

The multi national Smokestack Coffee Company is ruining the environment and coffee lovers taste buds with their horrible brew and chimney stacks belching filth into the air. Now is the right time for an enterprising person to open up a coffee chain and take back customers hearts and taste buds...