Cooking Diary, from developer MYTONA, is likely one of the most enduringly well-liked informal catering video games of its era.
Now that it has turned 6 years previous, MYTONA is sharing the recipe for its success. And, sure, it’s actually a recipe. Bon appetit!
Components
- 431 episodes
- 38 distinctive heroes
- 8,969 components
- 905,481 guilds
- Occasions and contests
- A touch of humor
- Grandpa Gray’s secret ingredient (learn to the top to search out out)
Cooking directions
Step 1: Put together the lore
Put together the plot, including twists and humor to style. Add in a beneficiant serving to of colourful characters to create the bottom on your lore.
Subsequent, divide the plot equally into districts and eating places. Starting with Grandpa Leonard Gray’s Burger Joint, step by step roll out the elements to increasingly districts, from Colafornia to New Yogurt to Schnitzeldorf to Sushijima.
There are 27 districts in complete, every containing new challenges and tales set in 160 eating places, bakeries, and diners. So protect loads of oven area.
Step 2: Add customization
As soon as your lore is prepared, add 8,000 customization objects, together with 1,776 outfits (together with 200 for pets) and 440 hairstyles. Then combine in 864 ornamental objects for the participant’s dwelling, and 5,600 for his or her eating places.
Step 3: Season with in-game occasions
Now take your base and fold in duties and occasions. Use analytics to steadiness the piquancy of the sport designers’ concepts, mould them into discrete occasions, and sprinkle generously with rewards.
Type the particular occasions into layers, guaranteeing that they style good individually and collectively.
For an instance of how to do that, see the second week of August in Cooking Diary, which featured a wonderfully constructed tasting menu of 9 completely different occasions, together with Culinary Experiments, Sugar Rush, and extra.
These occasions assorted in taste and magnificence, however all of them harmonized right into a single cohesive feast.
Step 4: Mixing in guilds
Meals is for sharing, and that’s why Cooking Diary comprises greater than 905,000 completely different guilds, permitting followers to share their outfits and achievements.
You will need to introduce guild occasions and duties step by step to make sure that their flavors complement the dish. For instance, duties assigned to busy guilds have been proven to lead to weaker returns than these assigned to guilds not at the moment collaborating in guild occasions.
Step 5: Don’t be afraid to make errors
Cooking up a sport is about innovation, and it’s important that you just’re not afraid to make errors whereas experimenting. Even Cooking Diary has created its share of unsuccessful dishes—although its builders have all the time realized from them.
For instance, in June 2019 the sport launched pets. Odd pets had been free whereas uncommon pets value Rubies. Hardly anyone purchased them, so the workforce pivoted to a Path to Glory occasion, which allowed gamers to earn pets by finishing duties, rising the sport’s income by 42% within the course of.
Step 6: Stick the presentation
When serving a sport, the primary byte is with the attention. It’s not sufficient to easily create scrumptious flavors and deposit them on the App Retailer, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Retailer, and AppGallery—you additionally must know the right way to current these flavors.
Meaning promoting on social media, posting creatively, and using tendencies. To see the way it’s executed, simply try Cooking Diary’s Instagram, Fb, and X feeds, the place you’ll discover a banquet of contests and actions.
Teaming up with one other chef is a superb thought too. For instance, Cooking Diary has collaborated with Netflix’s Stranger Issues previously, bringing two units of completely satisfied followers collectively.
And simply final month the sport partnered up with YouTube by way of the Path to Glory occasion, by way of which you’ll be able to win a free two-month subscription to YouTube Premium within the USA, UK, Korea, Japan, Canada, France, and Germany.
Presentation isn’t every little thing, in fact, however to turn out to be the second highest ranked time-management sport of all time, and win awards from IMGA and Webby, a developer must convey its A sport.
Step 7: Combine it up
A recipe isn’t a useless, mounted factor. It retains evolving as new concepts, methods, and elements come alongside. That’s why Cooking Diary is all the time on the transfer, from the balancing to the occasions calendar.
However one factor stays the identical…
Step 8: Grandpa Gray’s secret ingredient
Which is soul.
You’ll be able to play Cooking Diary for your self on the App Retailer, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Retailer, and AppGallery.
