Game update: 24/08/16

It's a box week in Restaurant Story which might mean no content for coins, but it does mean eight new floor decorations!

Notification for Nursery Crate

The Nursery Crate is a 24 gem investment, and for every purchase you'll receive one of the eight prizes at random. As per usual, your odds of getting the bigger and better items are long, so be wary of taking the gamble!

There was a time when a plant themed box would have had me pumped up with excitement and ordering a full blown debate in my head as to whether to open the gem bank. But at this point I feel like we're getting saturated with such decorations. The Poppy Crate, Roses Crate, Tulip Crate, Gardeners Crate and Sunflower Crate are all relatively recent in the grand scheme of things, and all have decor akin to the stuff in the Nursery Crate.

And to be honest I'd rather open up any of those others. The Nursery Crate's contents are pretty plain and in most cases lack a punch. The majority of the prizes in those other boxes are displayed in clever and innovative ways, whereas this new chest generally uses bog standard boxes and tubs for holding the foliage.

It's high time I offered up a glimpse of the Nursery Crate's goodies, so here's the teaser provided by the Storm8 Blog:

Items from Nursery Crate as shown on Storm8 Blog

Perhaps the most striking elements of this box are those two wall decorations. The Pop Art Soup Crate added in June pioneered wall decor in crates, and the Nursery Crate has carried on where it left off with another pair. At first I was pleased to see this fresh approach, but now I'm a little uneasy. When has anyone ever spent 24 gems on a wall decoration? Ultimately it's floor decorations which really make a scene, and therefore that's the category I really want to be pouring my gems into. This box cannot guarantee that.

Despite my mounting reservations, the game's developers do deserve some credit for some excellent renderings. The colours on show are dynamic and ensure a positive and cheery outlook when placed. The massive Indoor Nursery gets extra kudos for having some fallen petals and leaves scattered on the ground (why couldn't any of the others do that!) while the 'Flowery Water Can' is exquisite - the contrasting dirtiness and shine of the metal has been applied beautifully.

But to be honest that's where my praise stops. Other than the two items I've picked out above, everything else is 1x1 (or one wall slot) which makes any 24 gem buy uneconomical. This is vividly demonstrated by a rather empty distribution list:

First Prize

• Indoor Garden

Second Prize

• ?
• ?

Third Prize

• ?
• ?

Fourth Prize

• ?
• ?
• ?
• ?

Other than the Indoor Nursery which is confirmed as the top prize by the update notification, it's a struggle to pick out what goes elsewhere as they're all equally diminutive. Given that it is 2x2, the 'Flowery Water Can' is probably a second prize, but that in itself illustrates a point. Because once upon a time a 2x2 decoration was a dead cert for a third prize. These days they're elevated to the second prizes, with the stuff falling below that not worthy of the 24 gem spend.

Don't get me wrong, size is not the be all and end all. There are some truly fantastic items in the game which are small, but short of the gamemakers designing a world-beating decoration, the general rule of thumb should be that the prizes get larger as the rarity increases.

I may have only covered two of the pieces in depth, but I'm kind of done since there's not much to say about the nondescript nature of the remainder of the Nursery Crate. If you have opened the box and can fill in any of the blanks in the distribution list do leave a comment below and I'll be sure to revise!

What we really need after that box is a flashback to the excellent laboratory themed updates of the previous two Wednesdays. Cue the Science Lab.

Notification for sale on Science Lab

The full on lab based updates look to be over, but Storm8 have still managed to shoehorn in another lab item with this week's special deal. The Science Lab is 20% off for a limited time, meaning it is reduced from 55 to 44 gems for the duration of the sale.

I don't like to pile on the woe, but here's what I had to say about the Science Lab when it first released on the build-up to Halloween in 2015:

"This is a marquee price for a less than marquee item. For a start the lab is only 3x3 in size, and with a built-in purple flooring, I'm not keen."

Ouch. And thoroughly enough, I agree with myself. So it's a no from me, although I have to credit the game's developers for finding a way to keep the lab theme running a little longer. It's certainly a clever way of pulling players in as they may wish to complete their lab design with a premium decoration.

And now we're done. I tend to be more positive about the boxes than most, but even I struggled with this one! It just didn't have a spark to it, with the ideas team not managing to conjure up anything particularly notable. What a shame - hopefully that means they're saving up their big ideas for a bumper update next week!