You begin with nothing but some start-up capital. Your first step is to buy a suitable property in a place where you think pizza fans are likely to be. For instance, an outlet near a pub might get a lot of business after 11pm but will be fairly quiet during the day. Next you must hire a chef and some waiters and knock up a simple menu. Finally, decorate and furnish your restaurant before opening.

The idea is very simple: drive the other pizza businesses in the area into the ground. Pizza Syndicate offers a number of clever ways to do this. You can either use your superior business sense, or you can use some crafty underhand techniques to put your rivals out of business. Any methods, from infecting a shop with cockroaches to hiring someone to turn over a warehouse, are available, although if you get caught your popularity is going to suffer.

Everything that goes on is represented on an isometric 3D map where hordes of little cartoon people go to work, sleep and, hopefully, eat. The interface is quite slick, if a little tricky to use. Pizza Syndicate is simply another swing on the business sim genre and, although it's well presented, it doesn't offer anything special to set itself out from other similar titles. Fortunately, the aim in each area is different, from money laundering to market domination.

If you're a die-hard fan of the cooking-business genre then you won't be disappointed with Pizza Syndicate, but there's not a lot to really entice anyone else into giving it a go.