Drugstore Mania
Action & Arcade Games, Time Management Games May 25th, 2009
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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It’s pretty obvious that time management games will always delve into business themes and I’ve said it before a couple of times now that it’s going to be hard thinking of a new business to make a unique game revolve in. Drugstore Mania proves me wrong though because come to think about it, there’s no pharmacy-based casual game made yet until now. And it’s also a perfect theme as real life pharmacies are mostly packed with people anyway.
In this game, you play as Lisa, a newly graduated pharmacist trying to look for a job in the big city. Her big break came soon too after she’s been hired as a lone pharmacist in the apothecary located at Lakeside City. But Lisa’s adventure won’t stop there as you follow her journey jumping from one city to another until such time when she will work for the biggest drugstore of them all in Star City.
The objective of each level in Drugstore Mania is for you to reach either the ordinary or expert money goal within the set time limit. To do this, you’ll have to serve customers by giving them all the medicine they need, and when they are fulfilled, exchange your goods with money. You can carry 2 medicines at once, so make full use of this ability to serve your customers as fast as you can.
There are bonuses not mentioned during the tutorial part of the game wherein you earn more money when you deliver 2 same medicines at once. Do this for 5 consecutive times and you earn more tips. Before knowing this, the expert goal is an impossible task to fulfill, and afterwards, it just became pretty easy as you rack more money doing the trick.
All the money you earned during the previous levels will help you upgrade each pharmacy with decors and other useful stuff to help your customers. Drugstore Mania also lets you add in some other bonuses to boost your customers’ morale, like the candy machine wherein you can dispense sweets as bonus treats to your patrons, and the super useful radio that replenishes patience to all customers as you turn it on. Upgrades are pretty limited though, since mostly you find yourself having too much money before moving on to the next city.
One thing unique about this game though is how you get to monitor customer morale during the actual action game. Aside from the usual hearts shown in each customer, you will also have the thermometer to check if the temperature goes higher due to burning customer patience. The thermometer function is not very useful though, since mostly, I just check on each customer to service them faster.
Other functions unique in Drugstore Mania are the pharmacy book and the mixer. The pharmacy book is a single item sometimes requested by customers to help them choose the right medicine to buy. The mixer is a device used to handle prescriptions as you put in ingredients inside depending on what your customer’s prescription tells you. These 2 devices made the game more challenging since more management is involved to handle book and prescription customers.
In the case of design, I can only say that the game is mostly targeted to young girls who like anime and cartoons in general. In a word, the game is “girly” as you see flowers and other cute ornamentations adorning the background of each level of the game. All the characters are in 3D with big heads on top of relatively little bodies, noticed even more by Lisa’s constantly turning head whenever she’s idle. All in all, it’s pretty funny but honestly, just too cute for my taste.
Other bonuses in Drugstore Mania include a mini-game you play before Lisa transfers to a new city and a trophy system to track your overall achievements. Other than these, expect also great queuing response whenever you click through the various items in the pharmacy and of course, a nice challenging gameplay you’ll enjoy beating as you play through the game’s many levels.
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