Increase the fame and wealth of your restaurant in World Chef [Sponsored]

World Chef is a brand new restaurant management simulator by the developers of the hit mobile games Dragon City and Monster Legends.

It invites you to build up your own restaurant, increasing its wealth, fame, and range of dishes you can serve to hungry customers. If you manage to increase its success enough, you may even get celebrity visitors.

You won't find any time management aspects here though. World Chef is purely about serving up the finest dishes and keeping your customers happy.

To learn more about this new addition to SocialPoint's portfolio, we reached out to the Head of Product, Alexandre Besenval, to discuss what set World Chef apart from its genre competitors, the challenges faced during development, and what the team is most proud of.

What do you think World Chef offers that you can’t get from any other title on the App Store?

"In World Chef, you play as a restaurant owner who has to increase the fame and wealth of their establishment by hiring staff from all around the world to satisfy a growing number of customers.

"Most mobile games which use a restaurant setting are dash games, the goal of which is to serve as many customers as possible in a small amount of time. It rewards fast reactions and quick gameplay.

"World Chef, on the contrary, does not apply any time pressure. Instead, it's about choosing wisely which dishes to cook to make customers happy. The player is in control of their game session rather than the contrary, and there is more strategy involved.

"Also, from a look and feel perspective, the game is very different from similar games, which are, for the most part, fast-food oriented. Our setting is more of a chic and casual restaurant, so it looks different.

"The player will cook all kinds of dishes in the game. From very popular ones like hamburgers, to haute cuisine like a truffle risotto or lobster bisque."

What challenges did you face during development, and how did you overcome them?

"There was a technical challenge involved in making the magic happen. One of our main goals is to always provide high production values, and displaying tens of highly detailed chefs cooking, customers eating, and waiters running around is not easy.

"Fortunately enough we already amassed a ton of experience in 2D games with Dragon City and Monster Legends, our two previous successes, which meant we weren't really starting from scratch.

"Then the main challenge was to balance the game to make it fun enough and get the attention of our players. I am thinking mostly about the setup of the times it takes for dishes to be prepared, for the food to be eaten, for the kitchens to be built, etc…

"Our goal is to challenge our players. To make them establish the best “playing strategy” that works for them without frustrating them. Balancing requires a heavy amount of modeling, simulations, predictions of what will happen, and user focus groups. And, of course, a lot of real life testing through AB tests in order to find the sweet spot.

"We analyze which configurations get the players engaged to the game longer, and iteration after iteration we reached satisfying results."

Which part of World Chef are you personally the most proud of and why?

"The look and feel, both of which are incredibly fresh and state of the art.

"Also, we’ve achieved a seamless experience with balancing and timers that flow very naturally. It just feels good.

"The experience is challenging but never frustrating and the feedback from our players is very positive."

Do you have anything planned in terms of future updates for World Chef and, if so, can you give us any details of what these might include?

"We plan to boost social interactions between players in the game. We are currently thinking of aspects that could really add something essential for this topic and audience.

"Customisation will gain importance. Not only will we add more customisation possibilities, we will also explore new ways of obtaining decorations than just buying them.

"We'll also keep working on polishing the current ergonomy and experience. Our job will never be over on this aspect."

Have you any plans to bring World Chef to any other mobile platforms, such as Windows Phone?

"At the moment our focus is on iOS and Android, but we are open to bringing the game to more platforms depending on the opportunities we see in the future.

"There are no concrete plans for Windows Phone in particular."

World Chef is available right now from the App Store [download] and Google Play [download].