Restaurant City

I started Restaurant City ("RC" hereafter), by Playfish, a little over a year ago, around January 2009? It was pretty fun even when I started, and has seen constant improvements since. The first screen shot is from September 22, 2009. Following is one from June 27, 2010. At the beginning, RC did not have that little garden. That was added sometime as a tiny tribute to Country Story [link to that post coming later]. But the garden made the game a bit more fun.

Screeny from September 22, 2009. It was much simpler/basic then, but Playfish managed to add other things without making it too rambunctious over the next year or so. I still like how it looked.

I personally enjoyed watching little guys come into my restaurant, waiting to be seated/seating themselves, and then seeing my chefs start cooking and my waiters awaiting. At the beginning, part of the fun was also finding the most efficient layout, and the Playfish forums had a variety of guides on that. Later, someone introduced to me this live patching application that adjusted certain values in the game so that the customers would run around at super speeds, chefs would cook instantly and waiters would wait instantly. Occasionally, after a new version is made, some patching wouldn't work, but the author of the program would adjust the application to modify the new values and yea.

A few weeks ago, the guy stopped updated after patches, stating that he'd basically achieved all gold dishes and was going to update whenever he felt like. That was ok, because a few of the ones that were useful, such as instant cooking, still worked with the new major patch, which allowed employees to work hours players specified (as to in 4 hour shifts, after which you would need to feed employees or put them to sleep to regenerate energy).

Taken June 27, 2010. The little moon thing you see in the screenshot keeps the restaurant nighttime from the inside. That was given away upon 'mastering' a particular cocktail drink as part of the Lounge theme.

So now, I no longer have the pleasure of leaving the window open in the background to watch my employees smoothly serve the customers. If I leave them alone too long, the dirty dishes start to pile up and the number of disgruntled customers rise. :( Not a good sight/feeling. So now, I just ensure the restaurant has reached peak rating and save/quit. Oh well, less time wasted on staring at the little guys. It's like a little fish tank -- except instead of colourful exotic fish, it's colourful themed dishes, people and exciting restaurant action! Ok, maybe not that exciting. But it's fun to watch. :defensive pout:

Unlike Zynga's art, Playfish's art is more pleasing/appealing to my eye, with more tasteful themes and softer colours and edges.

Since Playfish games had managed to keep me entertained and interested for over a year, I did buy some Playfish cash from them -- all in the form of offers that provided me with actual items though, since the idea of paying for animated pixels that are no longer there when I quit is still rather disconcerting to me. So I got some flowers for my mother on Valentines day, I tried out New York Times subscription (not one ever reached my apartment, despite calls/emails. they were nice though, and credited me. even after I cancelled), got a Netflix trial (which I eventually came to pay for because I quit WoW and had to fill my spare time). ... So now I'm out of decent offers to fulfill. :(

Improvements

Some improvements that I have seen since I began playing are listed below. These creative and effective modifications have helped to keep me into this game. The weekly addition of generally tasteful new themes and items don't hurt either. Playfish also provides good stuff purchasable by just coins too, unlike Zynga, where the actual good stuff all cost real cash, while non-payers get shiddy shid. : / Hey. I do spend. But when I don't, I don't appreciate feeling like crap. Anyway.

• Garden expansion area. The garden area originally only allowed placement of certain decoration until they realized that it really limited decorating potential and creativity. The cost for expansion is quite steep, but they had a half-price sale for quite a while. Now the area is treated like any indoor area, except that it doesn't come with walls.
• More flexible employee up-time. As mentioned before, they changed the employee up-time so that you can have them up and about for up to 12 hours. If you let them email you, you can have them up for 24 hours. After this was implemented, Playfish eventually tweaked profits for 24 hours so people don't make almost nothing.
• Garden. Added a garden. Plants take 48 hours to become harvestable. Watering lasts 9 hours. Used to have to click three times to water (3 hours per click). As of the past few weeks, it has been changed to one click for 9 hours.
• Friend visiting rewards. Visiting friends used to net you about 15 coins a visit, which was not even close to being an incentive to visit friends. They changed that to 1000 coins for the first visit, 500 for the next two, 250 for the next four, 100 for the next ... two and 25 for the rest (I think.) Then they realized that was pretty generous, and might've seen a drop in sales for coins and Playfish Cash. Now it's 500 for the first two visits, 250 for the next three, and some other lesser numbers for the following. Fair enough, and kept people's interests.

Restaurant Front. Since I had bought a decorative item that gave all my customers bunny ears/suits, I decided to give my restaurant a bunny-cult-from-space theme.

• Interactive menus. Objects associated with menu items. First was the sushi bar. Maximum-level dishes on that list would be displayed on the little sushi bar. It was incentive. But not enough for people like me. Before the next item, there were some other menu items with prizes - such as a drink that, when maximized, would cause customers to shrink, menu items that gifted PlayFish Cash items. The next interactive item that came out was the Lounge Bar. Each maximized dish had a pretty good prize. These included a) an extra employee to man the bar, b) two prizes that increased bartender's working speed by 10%, c) extra seats (up to three) for the bar, d) an item that made it nighttime inside your restaurant all the time, e) something to make people sitting at the bar wait a second longer.
• Item Buffs. Certain stoves and fountains increased speed of serving (yes, mostly real-cash items, but they gave limited offers for a few that were ok as well, which was pretty nice.). Certain decorations increased popularity or increased customer wait time.

Gameplay Notes

The trading part is kind of fun, though as a tip for players -- having another account act as a sort of 'ingredient bank' to increase your choice of ingredients at any time is a good idea. Also, try to obtain ingredients in any way possible, because you usually get 1-3 per day, + 1 from the quiz. Then a few from gifts. A single dish generally expends anywhere from 3-4 ingredients. So level up once, and that's a day's worth of ingredients. A dish has 10 levels. so that's 30-40 ingredients to level a single dish. Consider the number of dishes. So yea, that's a long time to level them all. I'd focus on leveling the ones you want to serve most -- not just any that you happen to have ingredients for. Below is a general sample of the menu/ingredients needed, to give an idea...

These were some of the beginning recipes. Today, there are a good deal more creative recipes. Going to leave this post here, as this isn't meant to be an entire walkthrough (there are plenty of dedicated ones out there ;) ).