Review: Chocolate Factory Simulator makes finding a golden ticket feel like a punishment

Chocolate Factory Simulator is a game where you play as a chocolatier in a steam-powered world. You’ll get a very hands-on experience in creating specially ordered chocolate for customers. Working on a single order at a time, you’ll measure out ingredients, melt chocolate, temper it, press it into molds, pop it into boxes, and send it sailing up into the sky for an awaiting airship. While you’re doing that, you’ll have to juggle keeping your engines running and making sure they stay in working order.

There are a few ways you can express creativity by picking the chocolate molds, the design of the box, or even decorating your factory. You’re supposed to be able to build up your automaton, Nougat, to help you in making chocolate. I’ll go on more about why this is a misleading aspect later.

You know me, I can’t stay away from a simulator game to save my life. And, I hope you’ve come to know that I don’t mince my thoughts. If it’s a great game, I’ll let you know. And, if it’s not, I’ll tell you that, too. So, let’s just dive into why this was a disappointing experience. 

Chocolate Factory Simulator: An order of all bitter; no sweet

To be honest, there’s a lot wrong with Chocolate Factory Simulator. It’s the perfect example that games need more than to just look good. They need substance that doesn’t rely on repetitive monotony.

So, let’s just get the biggest elephant out of the room. There is zero-to-no automation in this simulator. You will be working on every single chocolate bar by hand with no help. And, I know what you’re thinking. Ashley, there’s an automaton and the Steam page clearly states that Nougat will help automate things.

Trust me, I thought that as well. However, Nougat isn’t useful in the least. You need to build up a reputation to get the parts to upgrade him. At first, all he does is talk. Once you’ve built up a level of reputation, you can order a part to make him move. After that, you need at least another reputation to make him hold things, and then another to interact.

If you’re relying on Nougat, you’re going to be wasting your money. I did a bit of digging in the discussion threads on Steam and the developer directly says that the game isn’t designed with automation in mind. You’re meant to be involved with every single bar.

Perhaps after hours and hours of gameplay, Nougat may be useful, but he won’t be helping you anytime soon. 

So, what are you supposed to be doing? If there’s no automation, what does the actual gameplay look like? Well, let’s just run through the steps.

Once you have your engines stocked on fuel, you’ll start getting calls for orders. For some reason, you can only work on one order at a time. Once you accept an order, you won’t get another one until the previous one is shipped off. 

I may be wrong, but I don’t think this is what “artisan” means

Orders will have a few variations, mostly on the type of chocolate and if there are additives. There are different recipes for every single order and it’s up to you to measure out the ingredients perfectly.

If you don’t have to add anything like strawberries or almonds, then you’re guaranteed to have a successful bar so long as you don’t overdo the grams of ingredients. However, if you do have additives, you’re going to have to do some adjusting in the book where your recipes are. This isn’t something that the tutorial did a great job of indicating.

Your client will have varying amounts of additives, but bars must be 100 grams. This means that you need to figure out a way to cut every single ingredient down to make sure it all fits.

If a customer wants a milk chocolate bar, the standard recipe is for 100 grams. If they want 36 grams of pistachio, you have to adjust the entire recipe. You can’t just take 36 grams out of one ingredient, they have to be equally pulled from every item.

This is where you have to go into your recipe book and subtract the grams of additives from the overall recipe. If you don’t do this, you have to do it in your head.

Once you have your ingredients perfectly measured, you’re in for a world of hell. Every chocolate has its own temperature they need to be melted to, then a specific temperature for crystalization, and yet another temperature to temper. While you can technically skip the last two, your score suffers greatly.

This process is agonizingly slow. If you bring the temperature up slowly, it can take several minutes just waiting. If you bring it up too fast, you’re probably going to make a mistake and burn it. You have to be hovering over the pot to see the temperature, which means you’re not primed to turn the stove down. 

Wanna play a game?

To turn the stove down, your hand must be empty, but if the mixture gets too hot, you need to stir it with your spatula. The mixture will get too hot regardless of the temperature simply because it’s not moving. And, to top it off, the buttons to turn down the stove are different from the ones needed to use the spatula.

Slow is the only way to guarantee you’re not starting over. Once you’ve hit the ideal temperature, you have to turn the oven off or remove the pot and wait for the mixture to cool to a specific temperature. Once it has, you put the pot back on the stove and heat it back up to the temperature indicated for tempering. This process takes about four minutes of just sitting and waiting. You can’t leave and you are locked in if you don’t want to burn the mixture.

This process is where Nougat would have been invaluable, but you have to make about 5-6 bars just to get reputation 1 where you can only have him move around the shop. You’re making dozens of bars this way if you want his help.

Once it’s tempered, you can take it to the press. If you adjust it to be 100 grams, it’ll fit perfectly. Otherwise, you’ll have to throw the extra out. And, if you’ve overdone it, the ratio for additives will be off. Here, you have to wait even more for the press to finish because if you don’t release it soon enough, you’ll damage something. After that, you can throw it into a box, and send it up off into the sky.

You do that over and over and over again. The only reprieve you get is when your engines need maintenance, which they need after basically every bar, but can be ignored for a few rounds. You use your wrench on 4-5 bolts per machine. 

Waiting… waiting… waiting…

Basically everything you do is a mouse motion. It’s not as simple as tapping the wrench to things. You need to hook it onto the bolt and move your mouse around until the gear fills up. Every little action tends to require some sort of mouse movement to repair, pour, stir, open machines, etc. So, if you have a harder time with carpal tunnel, this may exacerbate your issues.

Chocolate Factory Simulator is a game of tedious motions. You pour each ingredient precisely, you wait for the chocolate to melt/crystalize/temper, and you fiddle with two different knobs to press the chocolate into a mold and wait. It doesn’t feel rewarding and since the developer designed it so that you had to be involved in every bar, it feels like you’re not getting anywhere.

It’s a thankless, unrewarding job. You may get to decorate boxes and the factory, but even that is linear.

When you peel back the layers, there’s not much gameplay. You are put on very clear rails and it’s insanely repetitive.

Another issue that I have a problem with is the fact that the promo image is clearly AI. You can see where her fingers just meld together. While I know this is a growing issue for developers to fall back on for their promotions, I’m truly bewildered that this team decided to use it. Unless I’m mistaken, they had an artist. All the characters have the same artistic style right down to how something is shaded or highlighted.

They had an artist who created several characters, many of them worthy of being used in their marketing. And yet, they decided to use an AI image of a knock-off, steampunk Willy Wonka. It makes zero sense. 

The Oompa Loompas are definitely making a song out of this…

Lastly, there seems to be a way to fully lock yourself out of being able to progress. For whatever reason, you can throw away your essential items; your pot, spatula, and wrench. While it’s possible to recover from throwing out the wrench since it’s not necessary to repair after every single bar, you will need your pot and spatula to complete an order. So, if you throw one of those out and don’t have the money to replace it, you’re likely out of luck since selling your chocolate is the only way to get money.

All in all, I found Chocolate Factory Simulator to be visually interesting, but it stops there. If you want the repetition of measuring and waiting, then by all means, dive right in. You can get Chocolate Factory Simulator on Steam for $19.99. Personally, I can’t recommend this one.

Instead, if you’re looking for a fun simulation game that allows you to idle or be as involved as you want, check out the review I did of Laundry Store Simulator.