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I've been playing Food Girls recently because I want to write something about it for Rice, MoeGamer or both. It's been an interesting experience so far — and surprisingly compelling despite the extremely simplistic gameplay. It's very much a stat-building visual novel/dating sim type thing rather than an actual management sim, but there are enough interesting decisions to make so that it doesn't feel entirely like you're just going through the motions.
Back up a sec. If you're not sure what Food Girls is, it's a Taiwanese game where you play the role of a business consultant who agrees to help out a struggling street market. You work with three particular business owners — who all happen to be cute girls — in an attempt to make their shops more profitable and popular, and are tasked with ensuring they make rent each week, pass the business evaluations and, as the story progresses, successfully fend off some more sinister influences that are attempting to mess things up.
I haven't finished my first playthrough as yet — the game unfolds over three months of game time, and I'm two months in — but I'm already quite attached to the characters. The three main girls are a lot of fun, but the supporting cast are all rather lovely, too. Their personalities are helped along a great deal by some excellent use of Live2D to animate their sprites, and while the whole thing is only partially voice acted (in Japanese) the performers do a good job of reflecting these girls' personalities.
The whole thing is a bit rough round the edges and was obviously developed on the cheap, but it's one of those games where you can feel like there's real passion involved. The people behind this might not have had the budget or resources to be able to fully realise what they wanted to do, but they had a damn good go at it and put out something they could be proud of. Interestingly enough, this is something of a recurring theme in Food Girls' narrative. Write what you know and all that.
Anyway, as I say, there'll be something about this somewhere very soon, so keep an eye out for it! It's definitely worth talking about, but I want to at least finish a playthrough before I pen something properly. Likely in the next day or two!
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