Cooking Diary, from developer MYTONA, is likely one of the most enduringly well-liked informal catering video games of its technology.
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 parts
- 905,481 guilds
- Occasions and contests
- A touch of humor
- Grandpa Gray’s secret ingredient (learn to the tip to seek 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 in 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 an increasing number of 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 gadgets, together with 1,776 outfits (together with 200 for pets) and 440 hairstyles. Then combine in 864 ornamental gadgets for the participant’s house, 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, making certain 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 different 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 incorporates 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 presently participating in guild occasions.
Step 5: Don’t be afraid to make errors
Cooking up a recreation is about innovation, and it’s very 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 at all times discovered from them.
For instance, in June 2019 the sport launched pets. Unusual pets have been free whereas uncommon pets value Rubies. Hardly anyone purchased them, so the staff pivoted to a Path to Glory occasion, which allowed gamers to earn pets by finishing duties, growing the sport’s income by 42% within the course of.
Step 6: Stick the presentation

When serving a recreation, 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 have to know the right way to current these flavors.
Meaning promoting on social media, posting creatively, and using tendencies. To see the way it’s performed, simply take a look at 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 good concept too. For instance, Cooking Diary has collaborated with Netflix’s Stranger Issues up to now, bringing two units of comfortable followers collectively.
And simply final month the sport partnered up with YouTube by means of the Path to Glory occasion, by means of which you’ll win a free two-month subscription to YouTube Premium within the USA, UK, Korea, Japan, Canada, France, and Germany.
Presentation isn’t every thing, after all, however to develop into the second highest ranked time-management recreation of all time, and win awards from IMGA and Webby, a developer must carry its A recreation.
Step 7: Combine it up
A recipe isn’t a useless, fastened factor. It retains evolving as new concepts, methods, and elements come alongside. That’s why Cooking Diary is at all times 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.
