Restaurant City: Latest Playfish Game in Facebook

Playfish has created yet another popular hit with Restaurant City in Facebook. Restaurant City is a simple and yet addictive game where you operate a restaurant with choice of your own friends as cook, waiters, and cleaners. Dishes are created from ingredients, and there are a few ways of getting them.

Starting Out:
When you first started in the game, you would be prompted to select two of your friends to be employees of the restaurants. You could also choose yourself as an employee. Be careful who you choose as employees since sacking an employee requires a severance pay of $200.

After selecting the employees, you could assign them jobs as waiter or cook, and voila the restaurant starts operations! Once you have enough cash you could buy nicer clothes for the employees, e.g. chef's hat, sushi master' stop...etc. As the restaurant operates, you would also earn gourmet points. With sufficient points the level of the restaurant goes up. Leveling up the restaurant means you could hire more employees or get a bigger restaurant.

One thing to note is that gourmet points are earned only when the main restaurant is operating. If the player visit other restaurants, or go into the dish selection menu, or restaurant decoration menu, only coins will be earned and not gourmet points.

Coins are earned when your waiters cleared the empty plates left by customers. Each plate earns you 2 coins, regardless of the level of the dish. You could also shake the trees (similar to Pet Society) and 1 coin may drop out of the trees. Leveling up or earning awards will also entitle the player to coins / cash. There were some sites that advertise about cheat engines and such, but I think it is not much point cheating a game like Restaurant City since there isn't exactly a win / lose concept embed in the game.

Dishes & Ingredients:
The restaurant serves 3 types of dishes each time, starter, main and dessert. You could earn new dishes, or level up the existing dishes via the use of ingredients. Higher level dishes give more gourment points per customer served by 0.2. Thus a level 6 dish will earn the player 2.0 points per customer while a level 1 dish earns only 1.0 gourmet point. Higher level dishes also comes with nicer sounding name, e.g. luxurious, delicious...etc. The plates design for higher level dishes are also nicer.

Getting Ingredients
There are four ways of getting more ingredients. 1) Every day as you logged into the game, you would be rewarded with an ingredient. 2) There will also be a food quiz everyday, and answering correctly at the quiz earns you yet another ingredient. 3) First visit to new restaurants started by your friends will also earn you with a new ingredient. 4) Restuarnt City has just started a new function of 'Ingredient Market' where 3 different types of ingredients could be bought with coins each day.

More likely than not, there will be extra ingredients and players could trade among themselves for the correct ingredients for their dishes. If your friends didn't locked their ingredients, you could trade with them freely. If the ingredients are locked, a message will be sent to inform them that you requested to trade these ingredients.

Decorations & Layout:
Restaurant City offers many different ways of decorating the restaurant. The external view could be changed quite easily with coins to create different themes. New windows, decorations, trees, signboards are available often.

Similarly the interior layout of the restaurant could be changed. Unlike the exterior decorations, the interior layout plays a more important role. Functional items like toilet are needed once you reach certain levels (8 if I am not wrong).

The layout of the tables and chairs also determine how customer walk around the restaurant. Some players have suggested to arrange the restaurant like a maze, so that customers take longer to walk to the chair. It is also useful to arrange the tables and chairs such that the waiter minimises the walking distance from the chef to the customer.

One thing to note is that the stove design does not change the speed of dish cooking. The different designs are purely aesthetic.

So it may be better to arrange the chairs and table such that waiters are confined with a smaller space. Leave the corners for toilets and such.

Each satisfied customer will add to the popularity index, which means new customers will come in faster. Each time the customer is disappointed, e.g. too long a waiting time, or dirty restaurant, points will be deducted.

Give Restaurant City a try! The game is fun, and the only drawback is the slightly longer waiting time to load the game. New functions are constantly added. There is now a rating system where other players could become critics and rate your restaurant as well.

See also:
- Restaurant City is up! Added Photo Feed & Gourmet Street

Pet Society in Facebook

With so many applications in Facebook, one is often spoilt for choices. Recently I found an interesting apps 'Pet Society' by Playfish. The game is pretty simple, where the player raised a pet, and let the pet engages in various activities e.g. visiting friends, running races...etc. There is also the interactive part where the player could decorate the house of the pets with wall papers, furniture...etc.

Below is a screenshot of the 'Pet Society'. The three bars on the right denotes 'health', 'happiness', and cleanliness. Feeding the pet with food will raise the health bar. Playing with the pets by engaging in various activities could raise the happiness bar. Cleaning the pet with the soap given by the apps will help with the cleanliness bar of the pet. The upper left corner shows the number of coins and the centre top bar shows the level / 'paw points' (i.e. experience) of the pet. Raising levels for the pet will give the pet more rooms, and the house of the pet will also look bigger on the overall map. It is better to save the game (the disk icon located at upper right) before exiting 'Pet Society'.

Coins form an essential part of the 'Pet Society' and the player needs to participate in activities to earn the coins. Some of the ways include

• visiting friends to 'hug', 'tell a joke', 'kiss' (but not fighting though) etc which results in 20 coins per visit per day
• winning bet races, or participating in these races could also earn the pet coins. During races, pick up the banana skins for more coins! (screen shot below)
  
• or else the player could also play the frisbee, ball, or skipping ropes given by the apps with the pet for coins and trophies. Getting trophies is another way of earning coins
• merely logging in everyday means the 'Pet Society' application will give a 'lottery' prize per day to give between 50 and 500 coins
• walk among the trees and the pet could randomly get 2 coins (another screen shot below). If the player logs out of the game and logs in again, the 'trees giving coins' function is reset
• clean the pet or your friends' pets when the health bar is low, will also result in coins
• place the mouse cursor (not soup bar or brush) on your pet and press it while moving the cursor up and down, will also result in coins
  

Pets Racing at the Stadium

Pet getting coins radomly from the trees


List of trophies that the pet can get

Other than the stadium (for races), there are many shops for the pet to visit. There are the furniture and DIY shops for the pet to purchase household items. Some of the items could be animated for effects when the player clicks on it, e.g. the radio, TV set, lava lamp etc. There is also the food shop to buy various foods for the pet. The items could be given to other pets as gifts, or be sold for coins. If the player is tired of the pet's looks, it can be changed at the Stylist shop. Clothes and Luxury shops sell different items like clothes, rings, accessories, etc. If the player wants to visit pets of other people (non-friends), the player could go to the cafe and see the other pets. More shops are added as the developers enhanced the Pet Society apps.

Depending on the occasions, there could be 'special' items for sale. For example Valentine Day related items (flowers, bears, heart shaped decos) are on sale currently. During the Lunar New Year 2-3 weeks back, another set of items were on sale in the shops. Playfish is somewhat diligent in producing new items each week. There are also 3 different categories of mystery boxes which may give special items not found in the shops to the pets.

These are but brief description of the game. While this is essentially a social casual game with minimal depth, it is nonetheless a somewhat addictive game. Log in at the forum to see what other fans think about it, and get a pet yourself to try it!

See also:
- Pet Society - New Gardens Function