Wow, this game has a lot to it. Like any Splotter game, it is: heavy, thinky, massy and not like anything else you've seen before. If you don't know Splotter, it's ok, they mostly print 500 copies of any given game and sell those for more money than your usual game (75 Euros for this one). Afterwards their games become a rare commodity that is sold to the highest bidder. After Food Chain Magnate (FCM) was out, something changed and they decided to print more. The reviews were mainly positive and the crowd demanded more copies of FCM. What changed?!
Let us begin with a positive thing, I think the design on FCM is nothing short of awesome. For the most part, that is. I love the theme as well. If the name doesn't already tell you, it is a game about running a fast food joint. I am not going to go through every game mechanism, so if you don't know the game at all, some of the things here probably won't make a lot of sense.
Let us start with why I think this game is great, which are basically the reasons I want to love it:
The tech tree is nothing like I've ever seen before. The workers you can get working for you are divided into branches that correspond to different abilities. You have to hire and advance your cooks, marketing personal and management staff from a point where it's only you (Mr. CEO) to the point you are leading a sort of empire. Every branch does different things and the options seem endless. Wonderful, really. Side note: never to be played with AP prone players, unless you have 4 hours for staring at a wall.
Following the last point, the tableau building is really nice, and the fact you can change it every round makes the game flexible and interesting. It complements the employee tech tree in the best way possible. As a pet detective once or twice said: "Like a glove".
The "achievement" system, or milestones as they call it, is really interesting and it pushes players to be the first to do something (or at least do it on the same round). It is not as new as the tech tree and the tableau mechanisms, but this one adds to the game tension a great deal.
I also enjoyed the way you determine turn order. You really have to sacrifice an action or even actions in order to set where you are in the turn order track.
Before we go into the things that ruined it for me, look at the beautiful old diner style box art!
Served with your choice of strategies? Not the way I see it. It has no dice though, that is 100% correct.
Why I only want to love this game, but don't anymore:
Advertisement doesn't make sense to a point I want to shoot someone. Not every game mechanism needs to make sense in a 100%, in my eyes, but come on. I advertise a general hamburger? My billboards make people go and eat somewhere else? It can actually MAKE people go and eat a general hamburger and since someone sells one for 1$ less or has an extra waitress they will eat there. It is probably a good reason to fire any marketing person in real life. In a euro game mechanisms come before theme most of the time, but there should be some connection.
I feel, and some people will kill me for saying this, that the game is completely unbalanced. I've given it several plays and I can tell you that there's a golden path, in my opinion. Since I found it I won every game, which made it a bit boring. Does anyone know the designers and can ask them how much time was given to play testing or how much development was done at the publishing house? I think that not a lot.
The last point leads to some strategies that are dead strategies. Some paths in this game seem alluring, but they will only make you lose time and be out of the run for winning in a second. For a game that says it can play up to 5 players I would really think there should be 4-5 different strategies that can work, especially in a zero luck game. Don't get waitresses, they are just a tease. Maybe also in real life, but that's for tips. On the same note: how the hack does a fast food joint make money by having waitresses and selling nothing? Another mechanism that makes zero sense. When you make a game with such a great theme (and take care that things look and feel at least half thematic), you can't just say that a waitress are a +5$ engine. That sounds more like a vending machine!
Breaking the bank is just weird and unneeded. It was supposed to make the players surprise one another by making the game longer or shorter. Also, it should augment your strategy (sigh...) if it works well in a short or long game, respectively. In all of the games I played of FCM after the bank broke I just made so much money it didn't really matter what player's put in their cards. The game was the same number of rounds.
An annoying issue: we ran out of hamburgers in a 3 player game. Not even close to the maximum player count! I would think that an expensive game will come with enough game pieces. We took a beer that was not advertised during that specific game and said: beer = 5 hamburgers. Oh, and by the way, that's another way you know a game was not play tested and/or developed like it should have been.
All of that could have been easily solved. Make side mechanisms that make sense and help the main one, not hurt it. Play test more and with players that break games for fun (I'm not one of them, I just stumbled upon a strategy that a group of heavy euro gamers couldn't break). Remove unnecessary mechanisms like breaking the bank.
All of these just make me not fancy the game anymore. I wish I loved it, but I just don't. When I started playing I felt like it could be the next game I think of as a 10 or at least a 9. As you can see I criticize games A LOT, so that was a happy occasion. After a few plays it dropped. After a couple more it turned to a max of 5. I was actually a bit sad since I wanted to love this one.