C64 ~ Lemonade Stand Review

Overview

What is Lemonade to you? I think for most people it'll be of the Sprite and 7UP variety. But what about the other type, the one made up with real lemons? Well in Lemonade Stand (quite expectedly) you get to run a lemonade stand selling real lemonade! Hold up, just a moment ago, I read in the game "CONC. LEMON JUICE". OK, so you're not selling real "lemonade", but it's just a game, there was no real lemonade to start off with. But I don't even know what real "lemonade is". Now I don't know what point I'm trying to make…

Gameplay

Lemonade Stand is an educational game where you get to sell lemonade in a stand. As for who you're selling it to, or where you're selling it is left to your imagination. You know the deal; 10 weeks of summer holidays are here and rather than spend it all bumming around, your parents lend you a modest $10 to presumably start your own lemonade business. You buy the lemon concentrate, sugar and cups, set your price, then sit back and watch the money roll in. You also have to deal with the weather. Each week before you commence sales, the temperature (in Fahrenheit I assume) and something called the wet bulb is displayed. You use these 2 values to gauge the price you're going to set in cents. The hotter it is, the higher you set the price and vice versa. The wet bulb is something to do with humidity; if the wet bulb equals temperature, then we have maximum humidity. Once you enter the price and hit Enter, you slowly see your $$$ balance rise. You can't continue the game after its finished blinking up nor can you speed it up by bashing all the keys on the keyboard. The game has already predetermined how much you're going to sell, so waiting for the numbers to finish blinking up becomes all pointless and mundane after you've played it more than once. Having to wait up to a minute at times for your $$$ balance to finish going up is not on; even if kids are turned on by it the first time they play, it's a turn-off the next time round.

5.5 out of 10

Graphics

The entire game is on a blue background with white text characters. The screenshots below are pretty much all you are going to see, it doesn't appeal to kids. If you're just going to use all text characters, at least make an attempt to make it look good with more text pictures, like some yellow "()"s. A C64 has 16 colours after-all, use them!

2 out of 5

Educational Value

Obviously this is targeted at young kids 11 and under. So what will this game teach you? Basic economics. The higher you set the price, the less you sell. The lower you set the price, the more you sell at the expense more supplies being eaten up. Buy the correct amount of concentrated lemonade, bags of sugar and cups, then set the best price with only the temperature to consider to cover the expenses; preferably trying to make a profit, plus giving the $10 back to your parents at the end. No lemonade making/recipe involved, no fussy customers to deal with, no lemonade stand to upgrade. Not a great deal of real life skills covered.

2.25 out of 5

Longevity

After playing for about half an hour, setting good prices becomes quite easy and it becomes predictable guess work later on. It could take a little longer for kids, meaning an hour tops worth of gameplay. Worse still, the temperature values are preset to the same values every time you load the game. You're told what would've been the best price to set after a week of sales. So if you wrote down those values, restart the game then set your prices using the best values, you'll become mighty rich and you won't want to play the game ever again! This is appalling, seeing a Commodore 64 is far too good for generating random numbers.

1 out of 5

For: teaches basic economics.

Against: waiting for money counter to stop, text only, exact same temperature values used, too basic = lacks creativity.

All in all, this is a pretty ordinary piece of bundled software with the Commodore 64. If the temperature values were different every single time and we had pretty graphics, then this would have been good... for kids. You're better off starting up your own real lemonade stand. If you are, then the question is; are you going to sell soda type lemonade, lemon concentrate mixed with sugar, or lemonade with real lemons mixed with lots and lots of sugar?