Cooking Diary: A Six-Year Recipe for Success
MYTONIA, the developer behind the wildly popular time-management game Cooking Diary, reveals the recipe for its six-year reign. Whether you're a fellow developer seeking inspiration or a player curious about the game's creation, this detailed breakdown offers valuable insights.
Key Ingredients:
The Recipe:
Step 1: Crafting the Narrative:
Begin by developing a compelling storyline rich in humor and unexpected twists. Populate the world with a diverse cast of characters. The narrative unfolds across 160 restaurants and bakeries, spread across 27 distinct districts, starting with your grandfather Leonard's Burger Joint and expanding to locations like Colafornia, Schnitzeldorf, and Sushijima.
Step 2: Customization Extravaganza:
Enrich the game world with over 8,000 customizable items, including 1,776 outfits, 88 facial feature sets, 440 hairstyles, and over 6,500 decorative items for homes and restaurants. Players can also personalize their pets with 200 clothing items.
Step 3: Dynamic In-Game Events:
Implement a robust system of tasks and events, leveraging precise analytics to complement creative design. The key is to create layered events that are both individually rewarding and synergistically engaging. August, for example, showcased nine concurrent events, each offering unique appeal.
Step 4: The Guild Experience:
With over 905,000 guilds, Cooking Diary fosters a strong sense of community. Introduce guild events and tasks gradually, ensuring they complement each other and avoid scheduling conflicts.
Step 5: Learning from Setbacks:
Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. The Cooking Diary team learned from the initial unsuccessful pet introduction in 2019, improving the system and boosting revenue by 42% through the Path to Glory event.
Step 6: Strategic Marketing and Presentation:
The casual games market is highly competitive. Cooking Diary's success stems from a strong social media presence, creative marketing, contests, and collaborations. Noteworthy partnerships include Netflix's Stranger Things and YouTube's Path to Glory event.
Step 7: Continuous Innovation:
Maintaining top-tier status requires ongoing innovation. Cooking Diary's longevity is attributed to consistent updates, gameplay adjustments, and the introduction of new content.
Step 8: The Secret Ingredient: Passion:
Grandpa Grey's secret ingredient is passion. A successful game requires genuine love for the craft.
Download Cooking Diary on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Store, and AppGallery.