We’re nearing the end of the year so what better time for a huge progress update for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! You’ve already seen some of the gameplay in action, so I thought I’d detail the planning and management part of the game, which is integral in having a perfect day. Keep in mind that all UI aspects are not final in the screens below, and the game is still in development so details could change between now and release. You are the Chef. In CSD 1 the star count showed how your restaurant was faring, as you progressed from zero to five stars over the course of your career. In CSD 2 these stars apply to you as a chef, as you progress from a novice cook to a world famous culinary genius. To do this, there are two main ways of progression: building your restaurant, and doing daily shifts at other restaurants. Today I’m going to focus on the classic progression of making the restaurant of your dreams, and I’ll talk about the daily shifts in a future update. A Completely New Daily Menu! In CSD 1 you could place up to six items on your menu, and that was basically it. While challenges spiced up the gameplay a bit, the core of the game was fairly simple, and I wanted to expand on that in a huge way for the sequel. Here’s the old menu in CSD 1 for reference:
When you check out your daily menu in CSD 2, you’ll have a huge array of choices on how to best plan a perfect menu. No longer are you limited to six slots- the changes here are huge, so let’s go through them section by section. (Note that, like the first game, many slots will be locked at the start of the game and will unlock with progression to better introduce you to all of the new features).
Dual Menus The biggest change is the addition of dual menus, which allow you to have two separate menus in a single day! This means you can have a delicious breakfast menu at the start of the day, and by the afternoon switch to a lunch/dinner menu that has much more hearty meals. Or perhaps you want to do just one all-day menu and keep things simple. Or maybe a lunch menu is the better option, with a late-night dinner menu opening up around 6pm. You control the times that the menus switch over, which allow for many combinations. By having a dual menu your work hours expand from the standard 9am-10pm to 6am-10pm, or 10am-12am for a late night menu. This allow for more time to build buzz, make money, and earn progress. Time progresses slightly faster than CSD 1 to allow for the greater scope in hours, though Rush Hours still last for exactly one minute. Dual menus are completely optional, and having a single menu allows for the standard 9am-10pm shift. Preset Menus Check out the A/B/C buttons for both menus. Those are your custom menu presets. So if you’ve created an awesome menu and want to save it for future use then you simply tab over to menu B or C and build up a brand new menu. This is especially handy when most of your food undergoes menu rot and you need to switch things up temporarily! Desserts New to CSD 2 is the introduction of desserts. After a customer is served a perfect meal with a premium drink and side, they will have the chance to immediately order a dessert as another order. Complete that dessert perfectly and you’ll earn a Delicious Rating, the hardest rating to get in CSD 2. This will triple your earnings, progression, tips and buzz for the order! Because these orders are rarer than the typical order, they are given their own separate menu, which allows you to place up to three different desserts that are served all day. The more desserts you offer, the greater your bonuses are at the end of the day. If you'd rather open a delicious dessert café, then you can simply place desserts on your main menu instead of your dessert menu, and they'll be ordered like any other food. Drinks Toward the end of the last game it didn’t make much sense to use a slot for soda instead of, say, steak. Drinks weren’t handled too well in CSD 1 and I wanted to change that for the sequel. Now drinks don’t take up an entrée slot, but instead have their own separate menu like desserts, and can be served all day. Like desserts, the more you place on your menu, the greater your bonus payouts are at the end of the day! Drinks are unique in CSD 2 in that you don’t have to actually prep them for orders- they are automatically served to any customer that orders them, which instantly adds to your daily income and open the door for a Delicious Rating opportunity. However, after a set number of drinks are ordered, your Drink Station will light up. You will then need to service the station before any more drinks can be ordered, such as refilling the lemonade dispenser or popping another bottle of wine. Drinks vary with the amount of attention they need ($2 sodas that can serve 24 customers, vs $10 wine glasses that serve only 5), so plan your drink menu carefully.
Secret Ingredients From the common Herbal Leaf to the rare Fiery Glass Ball Bush, to the legendary Anthei Red Crystals and the lab-created Edible Mercury, these dozens of ingredients span the entire world and can change your entire day. But just what are secret ingredients? I’m not gonna say much about this except it’s a fun way to turn an ordinary day into something quite…different. If you’re not a properly trained chef, then use at your own risk. You’ve been warned! The Food Catalog There are tons of different foods in the game (over 180 in fact), and to better browse all of these, players are given a brand new Food Catalog to sift through the many different delicious dishes in CSD 2. From here you can buy new foods, practice others, and read about the incredible origins of some of these classics.
The Shopping Experience New to CSD 2 is the addition of a store front page. This is simply a fun new way to find out about new foods to buy for your restaurant, and every few in-game days the catalog shuffles the page, where you’ll find highlighted foods, foods that are on sale for a limited time, and even online deals that adjust prices in real time. Maybe I’ll do a crazy 90% off corndog sale for exactly one hour at 2am on Sunday…who knows! (Keep in mind when I’m talking about buying foods, I’m strictly talking about the in-game economy, and not using *actual* money to buy foods via microtransactions or something.) Of course using this store page is totally optional, as you can just go straight to the Food Catalog to browse all the foods instead.
To best sift through everything I’m implementing a better array of sorting and filtering options. So if you want only Healthy Nut foods that are under $499, bam! How about cheap $1 entrée foods that can optionally use Holding Stations? Ka-chow! Perhaps you only want to browse foods you’ve already bought to practice with or change some of the options for them? Shazam! Clicking on any food brings you to the brand new food page.
Food Pages At first glance the food pages look similar in functionality to the first game, but there are quite a bit of changes. You can now add foods to a wishlist, which will send an in-game email to you when a food you’re following is on sale or has an upgrade available. Also new is the ability to update foods and roll back updates when necessary. Finally, you can try out foods you haven’t purchased via a simple demo mode, or practice foods you have purchased in the all new practice mode that can simulate a rush of people or even rush hours! Upgrades Select foods now have up to three tiers of upgrades: Classic (C), All-Star (A) and World Famous (W). By upgrading a food you also increase its difficulty by adding new recipes and ingredients, but also increase its menu price, adding to your daily income. You can also roll back upgrades to ones you’ve previously purchased. For example, if you had a Classic Lasagna and bought the All-Star Lasagna but hate the new recipes, you can go back to the Classic Lasagna at any time (and your upgrade will still be purchased, should you choose to toggle back to it in the future). Upgrades are unlocked for purchasing via a new mechanic that I’ll talk about in a future update. Boosters and Detractors The boosters and detractors elements from the first game are back for CSD 2, which point out some helpful pros and cons of any particular food. There are over a dozen new ones for the sequel, and should quickly help any chef figure out the best way to plan a menu with the huge new selection they have to choose from. Stats and Keybinding Each food will allow for unique keybinds. You can now select it quickly via the food page instead of the complicated menu in CSD 1. You will also be able to use more keys than the first game, like arrow keys and numbers. All prep stations/menus can have custom keybinds as well. There will also be much more detailed stats for foods, which I’ll also cover in future previews. New In-Game UI Design When I first started CSD 2, I wanted the game to have a sleek look and a uniform design. I’ve gotten a ton of feedback on the game from the updates and trailers I’ve put out, nearly all of it super positive, except for one thing: a lot of people didn’t like the in-game UI. I too missed the funky design of CSD 1, but I plowed ahead with my idea of sleek and uniform. Then I wondered: what would a design look like if I combined the fun stylings of CSD 1 with a sleeker design that I ultimately wanted for the game? To refresh your memory, here’s what the in-game UI looked like before:
Now here’s my new redesign of the UI, which is still ongoing and not final:
I think it’s a step in the right direction. It still looks fancy but has some fun stylings that throwback to the first game. Special attention went into the prep stations/holding stations and ingredient menu, and I think those have been quite improved. I look forward to hearing what you think as I’m always taking feedback very seriously! Your input makes the game that much better. Still Cookin’! I do want to stress again that everything is still in development, but it’s quite exciting to be in this phase of progress where everything starts coming together! If you would like more behind-the-scenes info on the game, I do weekly programming streams on my Twitch channel and archive them on YouTube. I will likely do 1-2 more streams this year before breaking for the holidays. I’ll post tidbits here and there on Twitter as well (@chubigans). As always feel free to ask any questions or share any feedback on here or on my Tumblr, and I'll be back early next year with another big update! Till then, keep cookin’ deliciously!