Friday, November 18, 2011

Game Review: Restaurant City

For active Facebook users, you're probably invited to play or have played this game. If not, you're just not very popular.

Screenshot from the Restaurant City Facebook app
Kidding.

My restaurant's colorful storefront. How often can you find the Eiffel Tower, Cupid, kissing fish, Ariel, a baby chick, and a gingerbread man all welcoming you from one place? Exactly...
I was invited to add this app quite a couple times during my last quarter in college, but I refused to join until after I graduate. Why? Because I know I would love to play it every chance I got to be in front of the computer, and I procrastinate enough already. I saw my boyfriend play, and it was hard to tear myself off the screen. Instantly hooked.

If you ever wanted to design your very own restaurant, learn and level up recipes for your menu, and manage your cooks and waitstaff, look no further than Restaurant City. The perks of playing include being able to hire any of your Facebook friends as a cook, waiter, or janitor (optional bartender if applicable), designing your own restaurant, and choosing what recipes you would like to learn and level up. For Facebook apps like this, it's very easy to play when you have other Facebook friends who are playing with you, so you can help gift each other items (you can gift items and request items from your friends), visit each other's restaurants to give a friendly hand and possibly unlock a crate in which you share items (examples include getting rid of a sleeping bear, penguins, and skunks in the restaurant), and trade items. By having Facebook friends who also play Restaurant City, it makes it easier to learn recipes and complete the game's challenges.

Current restaurant set-up :)
The unique quality about Restaurant City is that unlike other restaurant games, you can "set it and forget it" (do you know where that comes from? lol)! Once you open the restaurant for customers, your employees do everything automatically, just like Sims! The restaurant can essentially be open for 24/7, the longer you set it to be opened, the higher your spending cost. So opening your restaurant for 1 hr is not as costly as opening your restaurant for 6 hrs, for example. After your restaurant completes the time, the exact same time also counts down for you to collect your 2000 gourmet points bonus (so if you open your restaurant for 1/2 hr, you also have a 1/2 hr time window after it ends to collect the bonus). Earning as many gourmet points as possible helps your restaurant level up! The current highest level a restaurant can be is 90.



There are many special stations that you can earn while playing Restaurant City. I currently use the Coffee Bar, Lounge Bar, Karaoke Bar, Gourmet BBQ Grill, and Sushi Bar! Other stations you can earn are their Smoothie Station, Pizzeria, and Bowling Alley. Their current newest station is their Candy Shop. Playing these stations require unlocking special recipes that help develop different parts of the station and/or include perks, like upgrading your popularity level or letting you hire another employee. There are also activity arcades you can buy for customers' self-use. I am currently using the cupcake icing arcade, cookie making arcade, golden harp, magic raincloud, solid gold wishing well, and the Independence picnic arcade. Both of these add more coins for your spending pleasure.

Another final tip: If you want to ensure that you have the highest popularity for your restaurant (the higher the popularity, the more customers will go into your restaurant, the more sales you'll gain), decrease the distance the waiters need to travel between the cooks/drinks stations and the customer! This works very well especially when you're just starting out the game, because you don't have that many employees you can hire (it adds on as you level up). I used to do island stations where my waiters would only need to move 1-4 spaces to serve the customers. Waiters need to not only serve the dishes to the customers, but they also need to clean up after them quickly for new customers!

This was so long ago, I can't believe it! This was before my restaurant needed to serve drinks :)
Have you tried playing RC before? What do you think of the game; any improvements do you think should be made? Personally, I wish that with their multi layout capability, they allow you to use your entire inventory (instead of needing to take stuff out of your first layout for your second layout). I also wish you could get rid of a tile (like how you press Crtl in Sims) instead of needing to replace the tile with another tile (it doesn't work out well, especially in the al fresco area).

Also, have you tried the illusion or stacking tips to make your restaurant more 3d? I haven't tried this myself, but I would love to try the gondola ride with the bridge!

All in all, I really enjoy playing this fun community game and I hope you get to experience its fun as well!

See my entry for the RC's Menu Competition: http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=1219525
And entry for RC's Restaurant of the Year Competition: http://forum.playfish.com/showthread.php?t=2695421

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