Zynga recently launched Cafe World, it's very own game to match the other restaurant games in Facebook. The game has the same look and feel as Restaurant City. And perhaps that's really the intention, because they are the only ones in the same category among cafe/ restaurant game types in Facebook. However, it has some significant differences from each other.
I have just started in the game, but let me share some of the things I've been learning so far. I've also included some comparison to Restaurant City which I have noticed so far.
Objective of the Game
You start off as the chef of your own cafe. The objective is managing a cafe operation, making it profitable so that you can purchase items to make your restaurant as unique and eye-catching as possible. Leveling is an integral part of the game, which unlocks certain features of the game when you reach certain levels. These include being able to have more choices in what to cook and option to hire more friends as cafe staff. You acquire cafe points, which is the level up unit of the game everytime you accomplish some tasks, such as cooking food and cleaning up the stoves you used for cooking. The dishes you cook earn you coins as they are served by your crew. You use the coins to buy more ingredients to cook your dishes (explained below) and to upgrade and decorate your cafe. Dishes continue to be served by your waiters as long they have been moved to the serving counter, even when you are offline.
The leveling process is different in Restaurant City, where the Gourmet Points used in leveling is earned as part of serving the dishes. And there is also the requirement in Restaurant City that the browser window you are using should be active (meaning, open on top of all other browsers, otherwise you only earn the coins and not the Gourmet Points). In Cafe World, the Cafe Points is earned as part of your activity in cooking, cleaning stoves, and serving the dishes, as well as the occasional hiring of cafe crew. What's similar is that you have to be active in both cases in somewhat different manner, otherwise you don't level up. And in the case of Cafe World, you don't even get coins if you don't cook since you have to manually prepare the dishes and move them to the serving tables before your crew can serve them to the customers and get paid for it.
Preparing Dishes
You prepare a dish by purchasing the necessary ingredients as provided for in the cookbook. However, you don't purchase ingredients individually, but collectively for the dish you intend to cook. This means no need to be looking for ingredients from friends as in Restaurant City. Ingredients in the preparation of dishes are purchased using the game's gold system, and are always available.
Each purchase of ingredients to cook a dish will yield a certain number of servings, where dishes with shorter cooking time having less servings compared to dishes with longer cooking time. Cooking times can be as fast as 5 minutes to as long as 48 hours. So there's really a dish for everyone, whether you are a 24/7 online player or an occasional Facebook user that can log on only for several times (or even just once) during the day. Certain dishes also yields different amounts of income, but the main difference in the amount that you will earn per batch is really in the number of servings per batch. Basically, the more active you are in the game, the more you will earn. Which only stands to reason. But of course, that also means a great deal more effort. To illustrate concretely, you will earn FOUR TIMES MORE serving cheeseburgers that cooks every 5 minutes against a spit-roasted chicken which cooks for 24 hours. However, with the cheeseburger, you will have to be checking your cafe every 10 minutes since dishes spoil at the same amount of time as the cooking time, as against checking your chicken once a day or even less since it won't spoil until after the 2nd day from cooking. This means that unless you can play for at least six hours a day, you are better off just cooking the chicken rather than the cheeseburgers.
Unlike in Restaurant City, dishes are not leveled up in Cafe World since it operates under a different set of playing conditions. Since I am a casual player that only gets to check my Facebook at night during weekdays, I can only serve the chicken or the roast beef, since they have 24-hour and 48-hour cooking times, respectively. But I tend to serve only the chicken since it will yield more income for me. Hopefully as I level up I will have access to additional dishes that have the same cooking time as the chicken, so I can serve more varied meals.
Hiring Cafe Crew
Like in Restaurant City, you start off by hiring one of your friends as a crew or waiter.
This also does not require their acceptance. You get to hire more crew as you level up.
Miscellaneous
You can also gain Cafe Points and coins by visiting your friends. Unlike Restaurant City where it only pays to visit your friend once, your first visit to a friend for a given day will allow you to get Cafe Points and coins, the amount of which depends on the level of your friend. And you can visit the next day and get the same benefits again.You can purchase upgrades of furniture and equipment to make your cafe look better. You can expand your cafe by buying a larger floor area also from the in-game shop.
The number of customers you will have on a given amount of time will depend on the popularity of your cafe, which is basically the same as with Restaurant City. But since the dishes are prepared somewhat differently, I find no real incentive in closing the cafe when I go offline, even if it would mean losing popularity points. You will get to understand it when you start playing.
There is currently no player rating feature. Hopefully it will have one soon. Not sure if they have a messaging system in place as well.
That's it for now. I will post more about this game as I progress. Let me know if you discovered something as well.
More Cafe World posts here.
