This was given away originally over on the giveaway site last November, and is one of many management games that have been released over the past couple of years For example: Dinner Dash, Lemonade Tycoon, Cake Mania and Alice Green Fingers as well as a few more mentioned later to name but a few . The program description goes
Quote:
Pizzas! Donuts! French Fries! How many orders can you handle at once? Delivery King puts you in the driver's seat as you race all over town delivering orders to eager customers. Features combos, powerups, wild bonus games and a rags-to-riches love story that will touch your heart!
There are no difficulty settings for this game, so prepare yourself for a fast and furious ride around this imaginary town in a top down view. The options menu contains music and sound sliders and a window toggle and the help menu contains four pages of useful information. There are read me and help documents (html) in the games folder, but these are useless IMO. Delivering several identical orders in succession earns you extra cash, allowing you to purchase power-ups that will boost your speed or increase the patience of your customers. You can also take advantage of a special customer who will deliver all of the current orders of a particular item for you. Earning special delivery items enables you to have two vehicles running at the same time, but ensure that they don’t block each others way, otherwise your bonuses for the end of that level may be jeopardised and you may even lose the game as there are no lives to spend. I lost the second level the first time around because I was too slow at delivering the orders. You can see which orders should be prioritized by the number of stars below the figure, as time ebbs away, the stars reduce in number. You are given a verbal warning if a delivery needs delivering urgently. There’s also a different verbal signal when you have more than one vehicle running. As you progress through the game you will be introduced to new characters who generally are good to meet as they will help you in specific ways for example the patron and the business magnate pay you extra for your food while the cook will serve all those on the route with the same order as he (or she) has, whereas the chef will serve all the orders. There’s also the TV anchor and the superstar with their own bonus attributes that I’ll let you discover for yourselves. Thankfully there are only two negative characters, the thief and the hooligan that will steal your earnings and disrupt your service if you serve them. This is easily overlooked during the rush of the delivery, so watch out. You can earn more money by reporting these characters to the police.
There are a number of bonus games which include shooting down flying saucers and the one where you steer your way through insane rush hour traffic. Although it was hardly insane the first time I encountered it. Completing these successfully earns more money and bonuses’s such as the vehicle speed up, time delay, time reset and supply all. Once these bonuses become available you will have the opportunity to use them on any level thereafter, however you do have to purchase their use. Once purchased an icon representing each bonus you’ve purchased sits on the top left of the playing screen. To activate the bonus you must click on it. If you don’t get the opportunity to use the bonus it will be carried through to the next level and the next etc until you decide to use it. Once it’s been used you have to purchase it again to be able to use it again. The supply all bonus should be used with caution though as this can lose you the extra bonuses you can earn by utilizing the characters that you come across in game, or the bonus you can earn by delivering the same item to as many customers as possible without changing to another order type. Watch out though as this can lead to you losing the game if one of your customers who have been waiting for another type of order than the one you’ve been trying to get extra bonuses for. The speed up bonus or the freeze time are very useful if you have a large number of deliveries to make, and really come in useful when you have the hoodlum or the thief to contend with as well because they will disrupt your train of thought while playing the game. If you fail to keep up with your deliveries, that is one of your customers patience runs out (indicated by the stars rating below the avatar of the customer); that’s it. You’ve finished the game, or at least that round, You’ll know when this happens because the end of level Daily report will have a red entry in the total receipts and the level rating and you will be taken to the high scores list.
There is no save button, but the game is automatically saved every six levels. This is indicated on the levels map.
Follow the links below for ‘in game’ screen captures:
All on one page:
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Delivery%20King/?start=all
As a Slideshow:
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Delivery%20King/?action=view&slideshow=true
Googled:
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=delivery+king&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
You will see that there are several different areas of the town you deliver to, these are denoted by having different coloured backgrounds. I would have liked to explore the game further, if only to post an extensive album of screen captures but having overslept four hours I thought seven levels would suffice to get an overall impression of the game. I only touched the surface of the game with respect to meeting the positive characters and earning bonuses. But that doesn’t mean to imply that there is a lot of depth to this game because I don\t think there is. After Googling for images though; apart from the bonuses and characters mentioned in this review, I don’t think there is much more to the game? However I don’t usually play this genre much apart from the games I’ve mentioned, which were bought for my daughter who loves this type of game.
I checked out the internet for other views on this game but found very little. I think there has been an overload of these sorts of games recently and to be honest despite this game only being just over a year old (released summer 2006) the newer ones such as Sally’s Salon and Fashion Craze, or if you prefer a food based one Stand o Food or Burger Shop are much better due in part to the improvement in graphics and better bonuses. This game is in some ways comparable to games like Lemonade and Ice Cream Tycoon, having to rush around a town like map, but I would put those games on a higher pedestal. That said, this game is still fun to play and can be quite challenging. For the young ones it may be a little too fast, but should be an ideal tool for 6 to 8 year olds to practice their mouse skills and thinking processes.
Other reviews of this game:
http://www.terragame.com/downloadable/action/delivery_king/index.html
http://www.reflexive.com/DeliveryKing.html?PAGE=game_review&RID=9628
http://www.alawar.com/games/delivery-king/comments
My final verdict on the game is 6 out of 10. I personally quite enjoyed playing it while writing this simple review, but I doubt I’ll return to it often, especially with more captivating games being offered such as the recently given away Treasures of Montezuma, which I haven’t been able to stop playing in between writing these reviews and playing my recently acquired games.
Thank you Alawar and the Game Giveaway team for a reasonable game.
To Alawar, you do mention in your sales pitch that upgrades may become available. If you are planning to follow that statement through I would suggest that you add a few more options to the game menu such as a save facility, so that you can save the game at the end of every level, or even better change the auto settings so that they will do it for you. I think there should be a lot more characters available as well as loads more bonus items. With these changes and maybe some better bonus games (I think the saucer game was poorly done. At least with the delivery bonus you were taken to a different screen. There should also be the usually common difficulty settings, i.e. Easy, Normal, and Hard, or more appropriately for this game, Slow, Medium and Fast. And even a manic setting.
The graphics could do with an overhaul as well, though that isn’t the most important of improvements as IMO the game play is what makes a game playable (obviously)
