Played Lemonade Tycoon? Bored of it but wanting more of that lovely management simulation fun. Well, it appears that Neohand has just exactly what you're after with their recently released Cuppa Joe's. This AppForge powered game, while not as pretty as JAMDAT's Lemonade Tycoon in the eye candy department, takes the foundational concepts of that game's genre and grows them tenfold into a much larger, more complex simulation.

In Cuppa Joe's you take the role of an enterprising coffee connoisseur trying to jump start a chain of coffee stores. Like most games in the genre you start with a fixed amount of money and spend it where you think it will best serve you. Buying coffee beans and cups is obvious as is setting the price of your coffee, but what about location. Should you try for the a college store or stick to the strip mall? Maybe you should go after the financial district? An interesting twist on the traditional one location game, Cuppa Joe's lets you run one, two or however many locations you'd like and even lets you have multiple locations in the same spot (Starbucks would be proud). Sadly the interface for controlling all the locations at the same time is less than ideal but it's a welcome option that I can have more than one store and decide for myself when or if I want more than one location.

Beyond the expansion of the locations concept Neohand have also added a greater variety to location upgrades than we've seen before on a Symbian management game. Players in Cuppa Joe's can choose from a vast array of service and store upgrades ranging from the obvious cold drinks to more interesting options like selling mugs and board games or offering a WiFi hotspot in their store(s). Admittedly some of these seem to have little noticeable effect on the mechanics of the game but the more impressive list of goals for players extends gameplay by hours over other similar games and when a title is as accessible for casual gaming as this such an extension could mean months of play instead of weeks.

In the end the game doesn't really take the genre to new places but it does offer genre fans an entertaining new game that is worth their time. While its eye candy doesn't compete with Lemonade Tycoon, there's little arguing with the gameplay and for that I hand it a well-earned 74%.