Feeling cozy and creative this holiday season? Sticky Business, by Spellgarden Games, is a relaxed resource management game where you create stickers and do the daily tasks of running a profitable sticker business. The newest DLC, Plan With Me features more stickers and other items to ship out to happy customers. The two newest things introduced are more sticker designs that involve organization and lists, and little treats to send out. As an actual sticker maker myself, I was excited to dive in and play something more casual and silly than I usually would.
Having started from the beginning with the DLC included, I was pleasantly surprised at all the tasks required of you. While you can play Sticky Business on a “timeless” mode, the real puzzle and “crunch” comes in when you are trying to juggle fulfilling orders and making new stickers under a strict time schedule. I definitely reached a point where I was starting to become a little frustrated because there were so many orders that came in that I didn’t have enough time to create anything new. Sticky Business saw that I hadn’t been creating anything and lessened the amount of orders for a day so I could make more art. I believe my frustrations would be less if I could tell how much time it would cost me before I did actions. When you’re in the drawing, printing, or orders menu it gives you a temporary amount to see how much time it’ll cost, but on shipping and trying to open the drawing menu, nothing is displayed, only warning errors. For a game where the only challenge is managing your time, it has to be more obvious how your actions affect it.
In terms of DLC content, it’s mainly just more choices of stickers. That’s not to say this is a bad thing, but there some bits in Sticky Business that could have been more fleshed out with some DLC TLC. My favorite part about Sticky Business are the little stories that slowly progress as people message you while you complete their orders. It would’ve been nice to have the stories react slightly to extra stickers or goodies that I toss in. For example, if the character was saying they were having a bad day or things weren’t working out, I’d give them some candy or a notebook, but their next message would still be somber without reacting to the extra things I added. It almost feels pointless to add the extra stuff, even though the candies and books are part of the DLC. The new candies and books also have a hidden menu toggle that’s tricky to understand and navigate to if you’re using a controller.
In summary: Sticky Business: Plan With Me is a pleasant little DLC update that enforces the core game loop. While some new additions would have been preferred, Sticky Business is still a great game. If you’re looking to get more worth out of your game, the Plan With Me DLC should be on your radar.
Jordan played Sticky Business: Plan With Me on PC with a review key.
