Chocolate fans, your PC game of choice has arrived in the form of Chocolatier by Brighter Minds Media.

Surround yourself with every type of chocolate bar, truffle or delicacy you can possibly imagine, all while having a calorie free experience. Welcome to the world of chocolate — “The Elixir of the Gods.”

Chocolatier challenges you to build a successful worldwide chocolate business empire. Similar to the many tycoon style games but with an original concept, Chocolatier is also an adventure game that brings you on missions all over the world that you must complete in order to propel your business to success.

Picture this game as the love child between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

The game brings you to the year 1880, where Evangeline Baumeister, a famous chocolatier, finds her chocolate company in financial trouble after letting her irresponsible sister take over. Her sister has also lost many of their famous chocolate recipes, and so Evangeline asks you to travel the world to find these recipes and bring the company back up to speed.

In order to find these recipes and re-establish business relationships, you must travel to designated spots all around the globe and meet with many colorful (yet stereotypical) characters who help you find the lost recipes and will guide you towards good deals on purchasing ingredients. Oftentimes these characters will send you on a mission before they hand over the recipes or make a large purchase. They will usually request you to make a delivery or bring a message to a certain person, so it’s important to remember where that person is.

The game can be tricky, as you can only find certain ingredients in specific locations, such as coffee beans only being available to purchase in Mexico (a necessary ingredient for your delicious Colombo Cacao Coffee Caramel Truffles and Dark Chocolate Coffee bars) and special lemons that can only be found in Trinidad. It’s also wise to know what products sell best at certain locations. To be successful you really must get to know the people and characteristics of each location, which is a realistic aspect of managing a thriving business.

As you travel on, you will gradually obtain recipes for increasingly fancy chocolates and your sales profits will increase. As your overall net gain increases you will be able to set up factories in every continent, and expand your business. The challenges lies in the constant need to expand, while simultaneously trying to micromanage such details as how much of each ingredient goes into each chocolate product at all your factories. The good thing is your chocolates sell for an outrageous amount of money and your consumers don’t seem to mind, so the money flows in at a consistent rate.

Chocolatier is a fun and challenging game that does require strategy and the ability to make smart business decisions, mixed in with some brainless, yet amusing missions to complete. This game is safe for dieters and those with an all too dangerous fondness for chocolate, but I can’t make any promises that after hours of staring at those yummy-looking computerized truffles, you won’t be running to your local candy store with an urge to buy out their entire supply.

Quick hits:

Publisher: PlayFirst/Brighter Minds Media
Developer: Big Splash
Platform: PC/MAC CD-ROM
Genre: Edutainment/Adventure
Players: 1

Playability: 4 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 4 out of 5 stars