Beauty Factory: How to Play Fragrance Developer {Fragrant Shopping}

If you are at least 10 and willing to invest the sum of 19.99 Euros you can now become a perfume developer or at least pretend that you are one on a rainy afternoon. The lessons drawn from the game are rather matter-of-fact. Beauty Factory presents itself as a strategic game around beauty and in particular asks of you to create  "perfume formulas that will please consumers the most, then launch the production while choosing the product price and deciding upon the budget for advertising." So it is official? Perfumery is not an art anymore and children should realize that as quickly as possible?.....

Zahra Boucha on iSubway is critical of the video game and amongst other things thinks that it lacks realism, yes, as, says the author, the players are asked to change perfume formulas constantly while me-too perfumes abound in stores in reality. Moreover players are asked to lower their prices in order to sell more perfumes while in reality everyone that has notions of luxury marketing knows that hiked-up prices sell fragrances more since it appears to be a guarantee of quality to the consumer.

It sounds like Beauty Factory is still putting the bar of creativity too high despite the request to pass muster with consumer panels. Isn't this saying a lot regarding the state of the fragrance market and its average perception at the beginning of the 21st century? Conclusion? Give us a realistic fragrance-developer game with perfumes that just change their packagings, their ads, and maybe one or two notes here and there (optional).

You can read more about the critique on other aspects of the game here 

Beauty Factory is available on Amazon.fr