Year in review 2015

Happy New Year everyone! It's been another year of ups and downs in Restaurant Story, with a wide variety of updates and new features. And as I will look to demonstrate in this review, it's been a 12 months which can really be looked at as a tale of two halves.

We'll start this nostalgic look back at 2015 at the very beginning. Being the 30th anniversary year of the theatrical release of Back to the Future, Storm8 decided to provide a commemoration of sorts, with the Time Machine and Mad Scientist released into the market for a limited time. It was a pretty cool way to begin the New Year, and would be a sign of things to come in the following months.

The first update itself was goals orientated and focused on Winter. It was here that the Ice Rink was added as the final prize, and it has gone on to be a very useful item.

Winter section of The Garlic Tree in January

Not only did many players display this 4x4 decoration throughout the cold months, but they also brought it back out for Christmas. I was one of them, having noted its festive appearance.

Looking back now, that first update was really packed out! Not only did we have goals and the Back to the Future stuff, but also the announcement of one of several content removals. On that occasion it was Autumn décor which was targeted, but in the weeks that followed Halloween, Christmas and later Valentine's Day were all given the heave as the gamemakers aimed to clean up the market. No standard pulling of content has occurred since.

The format for these removals was much improved on what we've seen at times in the past, with the notification coming with the weekly update on the Wednesday and the removal being executed the next Monday. Perhaps surprisingly these withdrawals were delivered without too much drama, which is good news when we look back at some of the botched removals of yesteryear.

The rest of January was mainly about two special features. The first was a supercharging of the recipes on board the Yellow Coffee Maker. The coin and XP returns were doubled for a limited time, thus giving players an opportunity to make a quick buck and clamber up the level ladder.

The other innovation was the addition of the Solid Gold Coffee Bean collectibles collection.

  Solid Gold Coffee Bean collectibles collection

Although a good idea in principle, this new collection didn't garner much enthusiasm due to the high gem cost to gain the required items and the fact that the prize could be purchased in the market for 1 million coins anyway. I did however praise the originality of the concept, and was disappointed to find it removed from the game and forgotten about within a fortnight rather than refined and improved.

Already I'm painting a picture of Storm8 being inventive at the outset of 2015, and the thick brushstrokes only continue as I report on multiple sales offered by the game's developers in the early months of the year. There were 25% off deals on several boxes, 20% off gem expansions, reduced prices for Valentine's stuff, and re-releases of St Patrick's Day content. You really were never far away from the next exciting sale!

And the coffee bean flop didn't curb Storm8's originality, as bundles made their debut on iOS. The Valentine's goals update was largely overshadowed by the Classic Bundle, which yielded a number of prizes from the much sought-after Classic Kitchen box.

Classic Bundle

At 80 gems it was really good value for so much premium content, so I went for it! It's the biggest individual gem buy I've ever made and one I don't regret as it really helped shape my new-look kitchen section following my annual refurbishment.

There would go on to be Mardi Gras and Easter bundles too, but all these exciting offers had a common denominator - they were not available on Android. That remains the case right up to now, meaning that Androiders still haven't had their opportunity to grab those great deals. This is especially disappointing given that one of the bundles included the Jazz Band which was a bundle exclusive. It's never been open to buy on the market, which understandably leaves Android players feeling short-changed.

Back to the Valentine's goals though, and they turned out to be something of a let down when it came to the recipes. Sub par stats for goal food is not anything new, but for the first time we saw variations between dishes in the number of coins per plate. To begin with this didn't appear a big issue since as well as some recipes giving 2 coins per plate (below the norm) there was also the White Chocolate Berries (Romantic Stove) which provided 5 coins per plate (above the norm). However the general trend after this would be for foods to give only 2 coins per plate, a fact that left many players out of pocket after completing goal sets. It took a long time for the game's developers to restore the standard figures, but at least they did.

It wasn't all bad news on the recipe front. As Valentine's arrived it was Mardi Gras which we were celebrating. and in particular the addition of Gumbo (Basic Stove).

Gumbo

In my ratings system the Gumbo managed the highest overall score of any 7 hour recipe we've ever had, thus meaning it was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Sadly it's the only new dish to do so this year, but it certainly was a cracker - it achieved perfect 10s across all five factors making it the first recipe ever to do so!

Looking back, new foods in the first five months of 2015 were almost exclusively on the existing basic appliances, with the Kids Kitchen Set the only exception. But there were plenty of these dishes, including four at once in both the cooking class update in March and the gardening update in April.

What was less prevalent were boxes, with the first one of the year not coming until late February in the form of the Italia Crate. It was one of only two boxes up until mid-June which was rather refreshing for those of us who are not all that keen on the gamble that the boxes instigate. But that frequency would soon change, as we will discuss later...

Into April and I felt the rainy days goals were one of the better efforts of the year with lots of versatile content. Indeed the Blanket Fort and Cozy Chair are both in use right now in my place as part of the Christmas decoration! It was also nice to get a Spring themed update which was a little different and made the point that Spring isn't all rainbows and butterflies.

Mind you, good weather did soon arrive with a trip to the Florida Keys. This update broke new ground with the release of Key West Gran-Gran.

Items from Key West update as shown on Storm8 Blog

We'd waited for a very long time for a Gran-Gran decoration, so it was obviously a big story. Unfortunately she didn't come cheap - a 20 gem price tag hung over Gran-Gran's head which was enough to make me pass. It proved a good call as a while later My Fair Gran-Gran would be added for coins, allowing I and everyone else to add her to the staff for a reasonable fee.

Summer did seem to come very early on the whole, with a Hawaiian themed update while we were still in April. This one included a few quality items such as the fantastic Fire Dancers which would go on to stand tall as a centrepiece of my beach theme throughout the hot Summer months.

More impressive updates followed, starting with an Earth Day theme. With seven floor decorations introduced there was so much to pour over. In fact I still am - I continue to think seriously of using some of them for a major gardening themed section this coming Spring. There ended up being three weeks of content devoted to gardening and I'd probably say that they were all among my picks of 2015.

In the middle of all this gardening malarkey came a new expansion.

Notification for new expansion

The opportunity to increase the size of our restaurants to 24x27 really came out of the blue. It was the first new expansion for years and did a lot for reigniting my passion for the game. I eventually managed to execute this expansion but am of course still saving after two more were added in May and July respectively.

Along with the first of those surprise expansions was the removal of the blossom prizes from the Spring goals in 2014. These were then brought back as limited time offers and via a bundle the following week, which reeked of Storm8 looking to make a a quick buck. My anger was there for all to see at the time, and it's still a move that irks me now. A longer cooling off period was needed following the removal, so as to ensure the money-making aspect of the sale felt more subtle. Similar shenanigans occurred in the Summer with some of the stuff from the beach goals of 2014 being dropped only to re-appear in a Value Pack days later.

On to May, and a railway themed update kickstarted two trends. Firstly it brought us the Mallet, a new part which has gone on to become a staple of constructible appliances.

Mallet

Even now it is almost guaranteed to pop up when we are building fresh cookers. The second pattern whose origins are with the railway update is non-goal appliances. I've already mentioned the lack of these in the early months of the year, and yet the Dining Car Stove changed all that. Since then every new recipe has arrived via a new appliance, with not a single addition to the basic appliances. The last such foods came with the aforementioned Hawaiian update.

The part requirements really did change hugely in 2015. At the outset it was still the Metal Sheet and Screw which were the most commonly called for, but that has since gone out of the proverbial window. The Mallet is nearly ever-present now, while new parts added with every fresh appliance have meant that the original new parts are no more. I have literally hundreds of Springs, Fuses and the like stored up which are now apparently useless!

The return of non-goal appliances doesn't really bother me, but when the Pub Stove landed with the London update in June there was outrage.

Pub Stove and Bastille Stove in the market

Along with the later Bastille Stove, the Pub Stove made Restaurant Story history by requiring 5 gems to buy. The contempt for the gamemakers was clear, and perhaps tellingly these gem cookers have not reared their ugly head again. I've still not bought either of them but do plan to invest in the near future so that I can one day reap the mighty 1 gem profit.

London was one of a number of foreign lands visited over the Summer, alongside the likes of Paris, India and China. But it was a much simpler theme which provided what may have been the best of the quests in 2015. The lemon goals were full of colour and cheer - just what you want in the Summer. Particular highlights were the Lemonade Stand, Cashier Lee (a great opportunity for those not around for the Asian goals in 2013 to get Action Chef Lee) and the Zester Lamps. The last of these has become a mainstay of my kitchen.

Another big talking point in June was the Chef Station, which was offered as an LTO for 55 gems. One of the most coveted items of all-time, I'd eulogised about this Classic Kitchen box first prize ever since it's release. Yet I wasn't quite so impressed when I saw it in the flesh, and with my Classic bundle in tow, decided to ride into the sunset without it. I do love the decision-making aspect of the game which comes with expensive content, and this one was among the toughest I've had to make.

At the end of June there was an app update for iOS users which would change the landscape, seemingly forever. And not in a good way. An update laced with bugs, most of which are yet to be fixed more than six months on. The biggest of these issues is the 'gift back' button which now locks on to a particular gift, meaning we have to gift via the Social section. It has become a way of life now to send a second part after accepting a request this way, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

Also in that app update was Storm8's latest innovation which was in-game video adverts.

Free gem video window

Tucked out of the way, this feature allows players on iOS to earn free gems and reduce cooking times by taking a few seconds to watch an ad. Sadly this isn't a gizmo yet available to all iOS users - I myself can count the number of videos I've had on one hand, whereas others have bagged scores of gems using this feature. I won't complain though having successfully exploited it in Bakery Story to earn around 500 gems!

Now to those Value Packs I mentioned earlier. Yet another iOS only addition, these mini-bundles could be purchased for real money. The first included an exclusive Lazy Sundays decoration which would later appear in the Black Friday sale, while other releases included the likes of Steampunk décor, ice cream décor and the mighty appliances. These Value Packs essentially created a third in-game currency, with real money superseding gems. That's something I wasn't all that comfortable with, and maybe the game's developers felt the same way - like the bundles before them, the Value Packs lasted for just six weeks.

It appears that Android users are missing out, but at least there was one good news story for them in 2015. That was the announcement in mid-July that the sequel game, Restaurant Story 2, was now available worldwide for Androiders.

Title screen for Restaurant Story 2

Of course there's more than one way of reading this - another is that it means less attention for the original title. In fact I think there could be more substance to this than you may first believe, with the general quality of updates falling after this big story broke.

Whether it was a coincidence or not, it was certainly unfortunate timing that at RS2s Android release we were in the midst of a run of three box updates in six weeks. This would go on to become six crates in 14 weeks, a much higher ratio than usual. That said there were some decent boxes among them, with the Gelato Crate, Zoo Crate and Fall Harvest all containing a minimal number of dud items.

Staying positive, we also gave a resounding thumbs up to the panini and back to school themed updates, which came back-to-back. These both included some impressive content, enough to inspire two new themed sections within The Garlic Tree. The Panini Corner probably deserves special praise as being one of the top new items in 2015.

The big story of August was the addition of the gem dispenser on iOS.

Notification for Gem Dispenser

Normally 450 gems, but available at 50% off upon release, it yields a gem every 12 hours. This really was a gamechanger. Never before had we been presented with an infinite source of free gems, so this was a heck of an opportunity. Regrettably I didn't have the funds to invest, but I did buy two Gem Dispensers over in Bakery Story with those gems accrued from videos, and would go on to pick up another pair on Black Friday for four in all.

Looking back the Gem Dispenser actually did a lot for disguising the rocky road the game was travelling down. Around this time we were in that second wave of boxes and also suffered the New York goals whose prizes were disappointing. I still can't believe that Storm8 thought they would be able to get away with their tiny Empire Statue and Lady Liberty!

In an unexpected break from the weariness, there was a massive re-release of Autumn content. With 36 items offered in all we were looking at what may be the biggest sale ever in the game. Given the shortage of Autumn stuff in the market prior to this sale, you could really feel the relief of newer players who were hoping for a shot at decorating for the season. The only downside to this sale was the shambles that was the Autumn Floor Mat. It was originally among the re-releases but was pulled after a single user on the Storm8 Forum pointed out that it blocked the door. Well duh!

This sale did give us some respite, but it would also be a shining beacon for the darkness that followed. Next on the agenda was the Dino Crate which I suspect needs no introduction.

Items from Dino Crate as shown on Storm8 Blog

It's only been around for just over three months and yet has gained something of a cult status as one of the very worst boxes and updates of all time. The fact it was a second successive box update didn't exactly help its cause, but the content within really was awful. Dinosaurs? Sure. Daycare? I guess so. The two combined? Never.

The moaning continued the following week with a sapphire themed update overshadowed by the absence of a Tuesday teaser. This is something which has become increasingly common recently, with a total of six updates since the start of October not including a sneak peek. Whether this is a consequence of resources being assigned elsewhere (RS2 and BS2 maybe?) or just a simple slip-up we can't be sure, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on as we progress into 2016.

Enough with the grumbling, let's enter October which is sure to bring some excellent Halloween stuff, right? Well it's all subjective, but the general consensus was that Halloween underperformed, with the quality of content lower than in previous years. Admittedly there were four updates dedicated to this ever popular season, but there were just too many bright and vibrant items which lacked the scary or eerie element. This was summed up for me by the Science Lab from the first update - priced at 55 gems I felt the need to ask the question of whether it was a Halloween themed decoration or little more than a scene from a professional lab. Also noteworthy was that there were only five items in the last of the updates.

What was more interesting about the last Halloween update was a goal to download a new Storm8 game, Frozen Frenzy Mania. This not only rewarded the usual gems but also the Ice Cream Truck from the Ice Cream Crate, a real treat.

Ice Cream Truck goal

There was a similar goal a couple of weeks later to earn a free Chef Station (after all that pondering in June!) Lamentably these two free goodies were only for iOS players, thus providing another stick for Androiders to beat Storm8 with.

The growing frustration did abate for the opening update of November which saw a return of the Autumn theme. The leaves floor tile was included in this and is one of the best! It's beautiful tones and seamless merging had me reworking my fall outdoor scene. It does appear that Autumn is the gamemakers' favourite season, as they seem to reserve their best for it! This was demonstrated by the next update which brought a quest and lots of apples. With 16 items included this really flew in the face of the lacklustre Halloween updates.

Then came a very gloomy weekend, with Black Friday leaving the community largely dejected. Only six items were released (five if you're on Android!) with four of them Christmas themed.

Black Friday 2015 sale items

This was a skewing towards the festive season just like in 2014, something which we all complained about at the time. The fact that I bought nothing and still have all those saved gems sitting in the bank really says it all about my feelings regarding Black Friday. And with no 40% off gems deal either the unrest among the players was probably greater than I've ever seen before, resulting in the most vocal speculation yet about the game's predicted demise.

Any hopes that the four Christmas updates would turn us around were soon extinguished with the quality of content not at the level we've seen in previous years. Goals week was probably the standout, with lots of décor pertaining to Winter as much as Christmas. The problem was that this was the case throughout the updates, with much less focus on the festivity of Christmas itself and instead a concerted effort to cover the holidays as a whole. In some ways this is completely understandable as Storm8 want to appeal to all faiths, but at the same time Christmas is the biggest seller of all alongside Halloween and I think many players will have spent much less this year than in the past.

 Year in review posts

 03/01/15 Year in review 2014
 28/12/13 Year in review 2013

Adding to the boiling pot was the lack of a Christmas sale. With Halloween also missing out on a batch of deals and Black Friday nearly a non-event, there felt a real hollowness to the latter stages of 2015. Compare this to the buzz that's usually around at the end of the year and it all becomes a bit anticlimactic and solemn.

At least we did finish 2015 with a flourish of some sort with the Snowman Hat box. I admit, it was a crate and that never bodes well, but it did seem to be one of the more well received boxes. The prizes were largely of good quality, and thus gave players an early chance to prepare their places for the cold of Winter.

It's actually only in writing this post that I've realised how much the game has changed over the last 12 months. I was obviously well aware that the last few months have been disappointing due to the lack of sales and less impressive content, but it wasn't until I reviewed the early months that I realised how many features we used to get. From re-releases and LTOs to bundles and new expansions, it really was glorious stuff back then, even if we didn't always appreciate it at the time!

So that brings a close to my considerable dissertation of 2015 in Restaurant Story. It has been a roller coaster of a year, and in many ways that does make it all the more fascinating when it comes to writing this blog. But of course it has left the game with a large number of dissatisfied players too. Only time will tell whether 2016 proves to be the year that we all have to step off the roller coaster, but you can be sure that I'll be here for every tight turn and loop-the-loop!