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 devoted player curious about the game's creation, this detailed breakdown offers valuable insights.
Key Ingredients:
- 431 captivating story episodes
- 38 unique hero characters
- 8,969 diverse game elements
- 905,481 active guilds
- A vibrant array of events and contests
- A dash of humor
- Grandpa Grey's secret ingredient (revealed later!)
The Cooking Process:
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 memorable characters. Structure the narrative around a series of restaurants and districts, starting with your grandfather Leonard's Burger Joint and expanding to locations like Colafornia, Schnitzeldorf, and Sushijima. Cooking Diary boasts 160 unique culinary establishments spread across 27 distinct districts, ensuring a constant stream of engaging content.
Step 2: Customization Extravaganza:
Enhance your game world with an extensive collection of over 8,000 items, including 1,776 outfits, 88 facial feature sets, 440 hairstyles, and over 6,500 decorative items for player homes and restaurants. Add customizable pets and 200 pet clothing items for extra flair.
Step 3: Dynamic In-Game Events:
Introduce a series of engaging tasks and events, leveraging robust analytics to ensure a balanced and rewarding player experience. The key is to create diverse yet complementary events, each enjoyable individually and collectively. August, for example, showcased nine simultaneous events, from "Culinary Experiments" to "Sugar Rush," demonstrating this layered approach.
Step 4: The Power of Guilds:
Cooking Diary's success is partly due to its over 905,000 active guilds. Introduce guild events and tasks strategically, ensuring they are well-integrated and avoid conflicting with other time-consuming activities.
Step 5: Learning from Setbacks:
Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. The Cooking Diary team's initial pet introduction in 2019, which failed to generate interest, was swiftly rectified by making pets unlockable through the "Path to Glory" event, resulting in a 42% revenue increase.
Step 6: Strategic Marketing & Presentation:
With a vast casual games market (App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Store, and AppGallery), effective marketing is crucial. Cooking Diary leverages social media (Instagram, Facebook, X), creative messaging, contests, and collaborations (e.g., Stranger Things, YouTube) to maintain its leading position.
Step 7: Continuous Innovation:
Sustained success requires constant evolution. Cooking Diary's ongoing success is attributed to its commitment to adding new content, experimenting with presentation, and refining gameplay mechanics.
Step 8: The Secret Ingredient – Passion!
Grandpa Grey's secret ingredient is passion. A successful game stems from genuine love for the craft.
Download Cooking Diary on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Store, and AppGallery.
