I know many of you out there will remember the classic game, ‘Lemonade Stand’. I know I had it for an early system, can’t remember off-hand which one it was now… But naturally when I noticed ‘Lemonade Tycoon’ in the App Store for free, I was intrigued. The game is simple. Buy your supplies, tweak your lemonade recipe, rent a location, spend money on marketing, and make as much money as you can. The interface is clean and simple, and most folks should ‘get it’ after a few rounds of gameplay.
The only thing I found somewhat ‘creepy’ and ‘disturbing’ within the game is the way they’ve made this a freebie. For some reason (and please correct me if I’m wrong), the developers seem to have integrated some sort of interstitial ad/survey system. When you’re in the game, and you finish a day of play, every once and awhile you’ll get a screen that prompts you to answer a question. ‘Are you male or female?’ is a quick example. You answer the question, the data is no doubt collected and crammed over by the folks at EA. The obvious guess is they are gathering info to see who is downloading the game… and use that data to build new games targeted to their market. Smart, different, interesting… and somewhat disturbing 🙂
You can check it out for yourself in the App Store (iTunes Link) for free. Let me know what you think.