The exact difference between a cool, fun sci-fi reference and a tiresome, please get out of my house and into the sea sci-fi reference will remain a mystery to me, but I haven’t seen anyone try and do Milliways from Hitchhiker’s Guide as a management sim yet, so sure, I’ll bite.
Things do start off firmly in Mos Eisley territory though. You recycle industrial trash heaps to clear space for dining rooms, where the shanky lookin’ clientele sit on rusted barrels and order a soup made from canonically repulsive beans. The advisor informs me the beans taste so awful that they used to be illegal. This implies the existence of some sort of rough-edged intergalactic bean squad. See if you can spot them in the trailer below.
“Grow exotic ingredients, create a menu that appeals to intergalactic palates, and discover treasures in the outer worlds,” boast the demo-enriched Steam and Itch.io pages for The Diner At The End Of The Galaxy. After I’ve built a kitchen and a small garden, I realise you can name your own dishes. Apparently ‘beans’ is already a recipe, however.
Aside from spacebux and ingredients, the main resource you’ll be hunting after here is fame. Make customers happy with exciting new recipes and slightly less awful chairs to sit on, and they’ll go tell their space mates how great you are. I do like it when a management game tangibly rewards you for spiffing up the joint. You can also send a ship off to explore space for treasure. Who knows what new and interesting legumes lurk in the forbidden corners of the cosmos? Things might go terribly out there, of course, but the ends justify the beans.
It’s from General Interactive Co, of wine making sim Terroir and interesting-but-flawed adventure game Chinatown Detective Agency fame. The full game is due out this year. Uh, Glup Shitto Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster Tribbles Greedo Slartibartfast Babel Fish amirite? There, sorted.
(Also, there’s a typo in this demo that asks you to click the ‘left moust button’. I’m not even mad at it. Moust!)
