Game: GoVenture Entrepreneur
Genre: Simulation, Management, Business Sim
System: Steam (also available on Amazon Games)
Developer|Publisher: MediaSpark
Controller Support: None
Price: US $29.99 | UK £23.79 | EU € 24,99
Release Date: June 20th, 2022
Review code provided with many thanks to MediaSpark.
GoVenture Entrepreneur is one of many in the GoVenture series of games that allows players to delve into business. You can choose between easy, challenging, or extremely challenging modes.
Start Your Own Business
The gameplay of GoVenture Entrepreneur is fairly basic point and click. Most of the game is played through menuing; players having to choose a level of difficulty, a type of business, buy inventory, and in the more advanced levels, hire and pay employees.
The most basic level is a lemonade stand. Reminiscent of the flash game from the early 2000’s called Lemonade Stand. After choosing a name and location, you have a list of required things to do.
- Edit your recipe. More expensive recipes cost more money per cup, but more people will be happy with it.
- Purchase supplies and food; you’ll need lemons, sugar, water, and cups in the right proportions.
- Choose a price per cup that pays for supplies and earns a little profit.
- Start the day, and click to make lemonade as people come up and buy more lemonade.
- The day ends automatically and players get a detailed report of how their stand did.
The more challenging levels add even more layers to this equation. In the most advanced stage, you will need to choose a business type, get permits, hire employees, figure out employee benefits and salaries, worry about health inspectors, buy from different vendors to get better prices, worry about insurance, taxes…
It’s so intricate, you might as well open a business on your own.
Gameplay as Education
This game is not for fun. While it could probably be used to scare some of the younger crowd away from the idea of ever opening their own businesses and teaching others what it will really be like to be an Entrepreneur, this game isn’t a good time to play. I remember liking Lemonade Stand a lot as a teen, but that was mostly to pass the free time I had at school in the library.
The first level is immensely boring though. You basically repeat the same thing over and over again with little variation, trying to make sure you have enough lemons to get through the day without wasting a bunch to spoilage.
The third level is so complex that it leaves no time for fun; it’s like having a full-time job and getting setup takes forever.
The middle version is still way too complex for me to find it fun. However, it is educational; players will begin to learn exactly what sort of interactions different choices will make. They will need to choose quality of the items they sell, how much to sell them for, and how location in the city can alter what people are willing to pay for items.
Not For Fun
All that being said, this might be a great educational game, but it is not fun for me. I don’t know who this game was designed for, but it feels like a game people would play in a class. Considering the educational possibilities for students, the price of this game is too high. Schools, at least in the USA where I live, are already underfunded and forced to spend thousands on outdated textbooks already.
That being said, the gameplay is very flat. The visuals are basic, and the whole thing is run by drop down menus. While this game could be great for those looking to learn more about the intricacies of businesses, no one is going to continue to play it if it’s mind-numbingly dull.
I feel like this game needs a little soul in it. Some visuals of the space, getting to design your own building, lay out your furniture, make decisions in more than just dropdown menus, and more like that would make this game wonderful. A good place for this would be the business plan section: instead of just writing a business plan, the game should ask you questions and it should make the business plan for you based on your answers. Such changes would move this title from dull to interesting very quickly.
Conclusion
I can see the value in this as an educational tool, but it’s not entertaining to play. Not to mention that it’s easy to tank your own business. It’s incredibly detailed, but the details are laid out in a way that is just boring. For $30 USD, I wouldn’t recommend this game to almost anyone.
Final Verdict: I Don’t Like it.
Thanks for reviewing my game GoVenture Entrepreneur 🙂
You are right that the game progression starts easy and becomes difficult. This is by design as GoVenture Entrepreneur is the most realistic small business startup and operations simulation in the world.
This is exactly what makes it so effective as a learning experience.
You asked who would use such a program. This program and its earlier versions have been used in thousands of schools, universities, nonprofits, government agencies, businesses, and Fortune 500 companies. It’s even been used in prisons to help inmates gain employment skills for re-entry into society.
I understand that you do not find the game fun to play. Every game ever designed has some people who like it and some who don’t. That’s the nature of games, movies, and other entertainment activities.
GoVenture is not designed for entertainment (even though lots of people do have fun playing it). It’s designed for learning, so the gameplay is very different than if it was designed for entertainment.
If I had designed it purely for entertainment, I would likely use some of the suggestions you noted in your review — but we can’t use those in an educational game because they use up too much valuable time with low educational value.
In terms of price, when compared to other learning options, it’s actually very low in cost (textbooks for example cost over $100 and can’t come close to the learning experience offered by a simulation game).
I hope you may find this feedback useful to understand why we designed the game the way we did.
Thanks again for your review — if you have any questions for me, I can be reached at Georghiou.com
Thank you for your comments. We encourage our writers to judge a game mainly on how it makes them feel playing it, which is what led to our rating. However, your remarks certainly make sense when looking at the game against an educational background. We wish you every luck on the game.