Bored of the farming games on Facebook.com and want to try something new? How about owning and running a restaurant? There are two new beta games called Café World and Restaurant City. Though they have the same basic premise, the two games are played very differently.
Have Fun Constructing Your Own Restaurant
There are similarities of course. The more dishes that are prepared and served to happy customers, the more coins earned to buy improvements to the restaurant. The stores are fairly close in what they sell, though Restaurant City offers things like walls and toilets.
Both games sell tables, chairs, floor tiles, wallpaper, dividers and plants, so it can be fun to spruce up the place. The nicest thing about these games is that friends do not have to be neighbors to be included.
Friends Don't Have to be Neighbors
Friends can be hired as waiters to help on both games, but on Restaurant City the owner can be a waiter or a chef, and he can even be put to bed when he’s tired.
That is the main difference (among many) between the two games. On Restaurant City the employees must either be fed or given time to rest or they stop working. Everyone on Café World works around the clock with no breaks, and the restaurant never closes.
Tricks to Playing the Games
One of the tricks to Café World is to make sure to keep at least one side of every table open so that the waiters can serve the customer. For instance don’t have the tables lined up directly in front of the counters (or anything else) or those customers will be ignored. There must be an open front or side to every table, and that does not include the side where the customer is seated.
One of the tricks to Restaurant City is to hire several employees and make sure one is always resting, so they can be swapped out every two hours. It’s much cheaper than paying to feed them. The developers of this game didn’t equate the cost of things very well, since a meal sold to a customer only earns the restaurant $2, but it costs $200 to feed an employee a sandwich for energy.
Coins are hard to earn in Restaurant City and entirely too easy to spend. For instance buying potatoes at the produce cart costs $2,700.
Which Game is More Interactive?
Café World is a bit more interactive and a lot easier to earn coins. The chef decides what to prepare from the cookbook and buys the supplies from there. This cost can vary from $15 to $5,000. The more expensive the ingredients, the more servings there are and the more coins they are sold for. The cheaper the entrée the less time it takes to prepare.
There is a trick to preparing food. Make sure to always leave one or two stoves open when leaving the game, so more food can be made quickly upon return. When starting the game, 3 stoves and 3 counters are given. Pick the most expensive dish and then several of the cheaper and faster dishes. This will give the customers something to eat while waiting on the expensive entrée. Once a pattern has been achieved, the game will function on its own for most of the day or night.
Be mindful of cooking times at Café World, since meals will either spoil or have to be deleted if there is not counter space for them. Note: However long it takes to cook a meal is how long it will take to spoil. The 4th counter cannot be bought until level 9 is achieved, but extra stoves are available several levels before then. Having 5 stoves but only 3 counters can be a bit tricky. Note: all stoves do the same thing, no matter how much they cost or how different they look.
The chef at Restaurant City cooks whatever is on the menu, and it’s a bit hard to change that. Each entrée takes 3 to 4 ingredients that either have to be purchased, won from the daily food quiz or traded with neighbors. It’s hard to have a lot of neighbors in a new game, so it’s a bit hard to get started. This game only runs on its own for 2 hours, since that’s the maximum amount of time the employees will function without food or rest. This aspect can become tedious after awhile.
What is With the Thumbs Up or Down?
If customers go too long without receiving food, they give thumbs down on both games. As every customer leaves the restaurant, they give thumbs up for good service or thumbs down for either too slow service or lack of open seats.
A high average thumbs up rating increases how many customers come into the store. More customers means more sales, as long as there is food to serve them. Too many thumbs down will bring the average score back to a 5, which means only a few customers will visit. Note: Cheaper meals will impact the thumbs up rating far less than expensive meals will, and no food/open chairs will drop it very quickly.
More Differences
Café World requires neighbors to expand the size of the restaurant, whereas Restaurant City requires advancing levels to expand. Café World requires advancing levels to buy more stoves and counters, while Restaurant City merely requires coins to buy more stoves, and counters aren’t needed. The chef at Café World can use all the available stoves, but the chef at Restaurant City is limited to using just the one stove. If more stoves are bought, more employees must be hired to use them.
Each game has its positives and negatives, but so far it would seem that Café World is the stronger game. Restaurant City has a more detailed store, but most players won’t earn enough to ever buy most of what is in there. Both games have glitches but that is to be expected in a Beta game. Play both and judge for yourself.
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