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The thrill of stacking shelves, the excitement of pointing a customer to the right product and the joy of humming along to the same muzak you’ll have heard a thousand times, now if that’s not the formula for a great game, we don’t know what is!  Sarcasm aside, a game based on managing a supermarket sounds rather dreary, but actually turns out to be surprisingly good fun, apart from one thing…

Supermarket Management HD (iTunes link) comes from prolific developers G5 Entertainment, and involves guiding your character, Kate, through life as a supermarket manager in a series of time-based challenges.  Each level puts you inside your shop, where shelves must be filled and customers served, all with the goal of acquiring coins to upgrade your shop, hire new assistants or increase your stats.

To perform almost every task, all it takes is a tap of the screen, unless you’re guiding someone to a product when you swipe them to it, or in the case of the cake stand and cheese counter, you have to pick the right product by moving your finger over the choices until the customer nods.

Not a massive amount changes are you progress through the 49 levels, but you do move to different premises and get to choose from a new set of upgrades in each, but this resets the game so you start with nothing each time, which is irritating, but there for a reason which we will come on to soon.

There is a lot to like in Supermarket Management HD.  It’s good to see a game with a female lead character, but it’s a shame she has a male boss who pops up occasionally to give orders but never does any actual work.  The graphics are really great; colorful and defined, plus the characters all have expressive faces and are well animated.  The audio fits in with the game well too, with some catchy supermarket music and a sprinkling of realistic sound effects.

So, it’s a fun game that’s great for younger players thanks to the innocent gameplay, plus it has a polished look and sound to it – where could it go wrong?  Unfortunately, Supermarket Management HD employs that most hated of models, the additional purchase of coins.  Although you earn them as you complete each level, the amount you get is incredibly small – and you can’t go back and replay levels to gain more – making upgrades very difficult to obtain, but for $0.99/£0.59 you can buy 100 coins to spend.  One hundred coins won’t get you very far either and with the reset happening each time you get a new shop, be prepared to buy some more.

No, $1 isn’t very much and yes, you can play the game without buying any, but the very presence of the option cheapens the experience ever-so slightly, plus it does feel as if the game is specifically designed around forcing you to buy coins just to get a little more from it.  It would almost be more preferable to pay an extra $1 on the purchase price, have 200 coins included and play the game normally, although for the $4.99/£2.99 asking price, we’d like to see them in there already.  We’re sure that parents would prefer this option too.

If we forget all about the coin business – and it’s not essential to enjoying the game – Supermarket Management HD is a cheerful game obviously aimed at a younger audience, probably female; but if you want some lighthearted fun and enjoy time management games, you’ll probably like this whatever gender you are.

Overall: 3/5

Additional: Make that score 4/5 if you don’t feel as strongly about the in-app purchase of coins.