Restaurant City

Restaurant City by playfish

Restaurant City (RC) is a game where a player sets up a restaurant. He/she can decorate the interior, as well as the exterior of the restaurant. He/she also is allowed to change the menu, learn the menu as well as upgrade food quality. Being a real time-based game, RC is another challenging game from playfish.

Game mechanics are very much simple. Every interaction between the players and the game, is just by clicking. Players can move the cursor to wherever he/she may go within the screen of the game. As boring as it may sound, clicking can be as exciting as player will be racing against time. You would not want your restaurant to be open when your employers are dead tired. So, the idea of clicking, unlike other facebook games such as Farmville, is quite interactive and able to keep the players busy.

Similar to SIMS, this game allows players to decorate. Items such as furniture, fridge, cooking pots, etc are for sale. However, they are not cheap. An average dollars invested everyday, is approximately $5000. However, a furniture can cost up to $10,000. It may seem to be unreasonable but this heightens the intensity of the game itself, adding a layer of difficulty and distance between player’s desire to purchase, in comparison with the ‘income’ that they get.

Other than decorating, one of the key factor in this game, being a food-related theme, is the dishes that players can prepare. Unlike Cooking Mama where players do not have to worry about ingredient but they actually ‘cook’ the dishes by cutting, sauté-ing, frying etc, RC focuses on getting different ingredients. For example, to cook a Mushroom Soup, players would need Mushroom and Butter. Once players have the two ingredients, which can either be bought, harvested or given free daily, they can unlock the Mushroom Soup dish. A dish can be upgraded until Level10, where it will give more points when served to customers. Interestingly, there are a vast range of ingredients, up to 40 different types and up to 60 different dishes. Again, this makes the simple game into an experience of collecting. Not missing the fact that some dishes have limited time to be unlocked before they are gone forever.

Those are the two main feature of the game which made more entertaining with minor features such as buying clothes for your chef, visiting other restaurants, etc. Such ‘mini-games’ are also important in magnifying the enjoyment of playing. Also, there is an educational side to the game where daily, players can take the Food Quiz once and if they answer correctly, they’d be given an ingredient.

RC seems to be boring at first sight, where players can not control the movement of the characters. However, this is replaced by the other features that the game provides, which apparently seem to overcome the disadvantage of control. Moreover, RC is not a mere game, but educates too. It seems to fit, the overly used term, work hard and play hard.

Kelvin