Strip Club Manager

It's probably fair to say that few children dream of becoming managers. Sure, they might dream of owning a chocolate factory, like Willy Wonka, but somehow the term 'manager' just sounds like too much hard work. However, once they make it into their teenage years, the term manager transforms into expensive suits, BMWs and bossing people around. Of course, this is likely to repel almost as many as the cherub's-eye-view definition, but there's probably at least a select group of teenagers just dying for a tailored pinstripe suit.

Strip Club Manager matches this sort of money-grabbing drive with the perhaps more likely adolescent theme of a strip club. In the game, you build up three strip clubs from the ground, buying tables and hiring security, waitresses, dancers and all sorts of other club-worthy accessories. To start with, you can only afford the basics, but more items are unlocked fairly seamlessly as you work your club from a seedy filth pit into a thriving business.

To make the quickest progress, you need to match up your clientele with the right dancer. There are a number of different crowd members that will pass through your doors, from cap-popping gangstas to Stetson'd cowboy types. Each crowd prefers a different dancer, although you'll have to learn this for yourself as you're only given the dancers' names in a list. Choose carefully, though, as each time you change a dancer you have to pay a fairly hefty sum.

For the most part, you can just upgrade your club as the new items become available without worrying about the effect they'll have on your joint. Everything generally keeps ticking over by itself with fairly little attention.

At heart, Strip Club Manager offers only the most basic strategic or tycoon elements. Since the club almost runs itself, the game presents you with emergency situations, such as throwing in a few troublemaking punters or a power cut. These get more frequent as you move onto the later clubs, but after a despairing exhalation and a few button clicks, you'll be back on track.

Since even these supposed disasters don't really set you back all that much, progression is very linear, and you'll be able to swagger your way to the final club with relative ease. In spite of these delinquent elements, however, there's still something rather likeable about Strip Club Manager. After all, it's not as if the game ever pretends it's a deep and complex beast. You control the club from a single screen, so everything is immediately accessible without having to indulge in joint-worrying scrolling.

Visually, Strip Club Manager can be described in the same sort of terms. It's simple and perhaps unambitious, but ultimately amiable. For an adult-themed game, it lacks the often crass hallmarks of the genre, opting for a light-hearted cartoon approach rather than any serious attempts at titillation.

As such, Strip Club Manager is a bit of an odd title. An adult theme that's not all that adult; a tycoon premise that doesn't leave you worrying over the pennies. We might say that it seems like a prototype for a more involved and challenging game, but then again the experience's linear structure is so confidently executed that everything ends up seeming consciously decided-upon. It's no trailblazer of the strategy genre, then, but for a casual adult title it is unusually charming.

Strip Club Manager

Far less strategic than most tycoon games and far less adult than most adult games, but Strip Club Manager offers some pleasant casual fun
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