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 behind-the-scenes look offers valuable insights.
Key Ingredients:
- 431 captivating story episodes
- 38 unique hero characters
- 8,969 diverse in-game elements
- 905,481 thriving guilds
- A generous helping of engaging 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 vibrant cast of characters. The narrative unfolds across 160 restaurants and bakeries spread across 27 districts, starting with your grandfather Leonard's Burger Joint and expanding to locations like Colafornia, Schnitzeldorf, and Sushijima.
Step 2: Customization Extravaganza:
Enhance the game world with approximately 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 also personalize their pets with 200 clothing options.
Step 3: Dynamic In-Game Events:
Introduce a variety of engaging tasks and events. Leverage robust analytics to ensure event design aligns with player preferences and data-driven insights. The key is creating complementary event layers, each enjoyable individually and collectively. August, for example, featured nine concurrent events, demonstrating this layered approach.
Step 4: Building a Guild Community:
Cooking Diary boasts over 905,000 guilds. Introduce guild events and tasks gradually and strategically, avoiding overlaps that might diminish participation.
Step 5: Learning from Setbacks:
Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. The Cooking Diary team learned valuable lessons from the initial, unsuccessful introduction of pets in 2019. By making pets unlockable through the Path to Glory event, they achieved a 42% revenue increase.
Step 6: Strategic Marketing and Presentation:
With a presence across the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Store, and AppGallery, Cooking Diary employs a robust social media strategy (Instagram, Facebook, X) and strategic collaborations, including a partnership with Netflix's Stranger Things and YouTube's Path to Glory event.
Step 7: Continuous Innovation:
Sustained success requires ongoing innovation. Cooking Diary consistently adds new content, refines its presentation, and experiments with gameplay mechanics, ensuring its continued appeal.
Step 8: Grandpa Grey's Secret Ingredient:
The true secret ingredient is passion. A successful game is built on genuine love for the craft.
Download Cooking Diary on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Microsoft Store, and AppGallery.
