Review of "Blue Mango Twist"

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Blue Mango Twist is an Korean import. While it's translated, it simply demonstrates that the Koreans are much more dedicated gamers than we are, and BMT is an extremely serious game disguised as a simple game.

BMT has you running a fruit juice stand, fresh-squeezed. You have to squeeze the juices while tending to your customers, and this makes it one of those "run-around" games similar to Diner Dash or ER Rush. However, this one has got a couple twist to it.

First of all, the juice squeezing part is a quick action puzzle. The fruits are coming down randomly mixed in 3 columns. You need to line the fruits up 3 pieces in a column to get them squeezed. There are 3 types of fruits, and you need to have the right juices ready for the customers. However, you also need to stock up as it takes 1 cup, 1 spoon of sugar, 3 cubes of ice, and 3 pieces of fruit to make 1 cup of juice. So before you even open you need to buy up supplies needed for the day. Fruit will spoil overnight and ice melts overnight, so you want minimum amount of wastage. (Later you can buy equipment that makes ice, stores fruit and ice, and so on).



When customers arrive, you need to serve them, by selecting the right type of juice, and dispense the juice into a cup. You must fill the cup to the brim, no more, and no less. If you go less, customer rates you bad. If you go more and overflow, it's still poor. Worse, if you ran out of supplies, or served the wrong type of juice to the customer, that customer will rate you poor as well. However, if you dispense JUST RIGHT, customer will tip you extra with a "COOL" rating.

Both of these can be enough for a game, but imagine doing BOTH at the same time! Buy up supplies, then as soon as you open you quickly squeeze several portions of each fruit to build up a reserve. Then customers start arriving as you try to squeeze a few more while the juices are dispensing. Then the customers start lining up, and as they wait their faces start to get darker and darker... While you struggle to dispense the right amount every time, AND squeeze juices while you can... Later, you'll upgrade to hi-speed dispenser nozzles, multi-head dispensers (dispense two or three cups at the same time!) and other upgrades. However, customers start to have less and less patience, oddball customers start arriving that can't make up their mind and you have to catch them at the right moment, and other "missions" such as "Make 120 customer score by Date X" or "Get revenue of $100 per day by Date Y".

Then there are the other minigames. Every few days it's time to do "deliveries", which means you play "dispatcher" for trucks to ship fruit extracts to various stores, so you have to turn on/off lights at various stores, as well as dispatch the right kind of juice to each store. About once a week you may be called to do a juice squeezing contest, where you must do as much squeezing in 60 seconds. Sometimes, you can hire parttime help to squeeze the juice before you start dispensing. Remember, there are also upgrades to lessen wastage, improve serving speed, improve customer patience, and more.

The game really gets your adrenaline pumping and will have you sighing with relief at the end of each day, as you fight customers, your fruits, and your machine in order to get everything right. Then it's read the news, buy the supplies, and see if you can survive another day of business.

All in all BMT is a great game if you can figure out how to dispense two or three different cup of juices together and in general live off the adrenaline. It's one heck of a ride, and if you like this genre, you should give it a try.