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 breakdown offers valuable insights.
Key Ingredients:
- 431 captivating story episodes
- 38 unique hero characters
- 8,969 diverse in-game elements
- 905,481 thriving 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 with a compelling storyline, rich in humor and unexpected twists. Populate the world with a diverse cast of characters. The story unfolds across various restaurants and districts, starting with your grandfather Leonard's Burger Joint and expanding to locations like Colafornia, Schnitzeldorf, and Sushijima. Cooking Diary features 160 unique eateries spread across 27 vibrant districts, ensuring a constant stream of engaging content.
Step 2: Customization Extravaganza:
Enhance 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 even personalize their pets with 200 clothing items.
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 layering events – each event should be enjoyable on its own, while also complementing others. August, for example, featured nine concurrent events, each offering a unique experience.
Step 4: Building a Guild Community:
Cooking Diary boasts over 905,000 guilds, fostering a strong sense of community. Introduce guild events and tasks strategically, ensuring they don't overlap and negatively impact player engagement.
Step 5: Learning from Setbacks:
Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. The Cooking Diary team learned valuable lessons from the initial launch of pets in 2019. An adjustment to the pet acquisition system via the "Path to Glory" event resulted in a significant 42% revenue increase.
Step 6: Strategic Marketing and Presentation:
Cooking Diary's success extends beyond the game itself. A strong social media presence across Instagram, Facebook, and X, coupled with strategic collaborations (like the Stranger Things and YouTube partnerships), has been instrumental in reaching a wide audience.
Step 7: Continuous Innovation:
Maintaining success requires constant evolution. Cooking Diary consistently introduces new content, refines gameplay mechanics, and adapts to evolving trends.
Step 8: The Secret Ingredient – Passion:
Grandpa Grey's secret ingredient is passion. Creating a successful game requires genuine love for the craft.
Download Cooking Diary on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Store, and AppGallery.