Year in review 2016

From fancy high end dining updates and the ultimate Christmas sale to mysterious pop art crates and combining together chimps and pizza, 2016 has been another stellar year in the life of Restaurant Story. In this gargantuan post I'm going to take us on a nice little cruise through the last 12 months of the game.

According to my doom-mongering at the end of 2015, this was to be the year that Restaurant Story came to a end, fading into obscurity in favour of the sequel title, Restaurant Story 2. How wrong I was. Instead RS2 has endured a substantial slowdown while the original has chugged on, belching out more steam than ever before as it travelled from update to update.

The journey started with several seasonal updates in January revolving around New Year (both Gregorian and Chinese) and winter, with the latter providing wedding based goals. It was the winter themed update which offered the most notable addition, with the Laurel Leaves breaking new ground in the game.

Laurel Leaves prior to removal

This wall decoration was initially available for '0 coins' before being pulled and flagged as a glitch. The Greek themed update at the end of the month was where it should have been released, and indeed was, this time for a less generous 19,200 coins.

That was a reasonably straightforward error easily corrected. Although it's not been a bad year (by Storm8 standards!) for technical issues, there was one complete shocker punctured the Valentine's Day period. I am of course alluding to an iOS app update released in February whose main success was fixing the long running malfunctioning 'gift back' button. In truth that was the only success, and was quickly forgotten amid the chaos of many players being locked out of their accounts.

The account login feature had been hugely popular since it's introduction due to it allowing players the opportunity to create secondary diners via another device, but with this now infamous app update it was removed. The alternative involves utilising the Game Center as a portal for user accounts but to this day I'm unclear of how the system works.

App update to version 1.7.8 on iTunes App Store

And many of those unfortunate players who lost their accounts are still without their original game. Long-time reader mexispice is among them having never been able to recover her account. For others including myself another app update for iOS in April did solve the problem, but that's scant consolation for folks like mexispice.

My greatest frustration out of this entire episode was the total absence of any communication from the gamemakers. The Storm8 Forum is an excellent platform for such communication and yet moderators were left groping in the dark while an email I sent to Storm8 Support outlining my own personal woes didn't receive a response until some nine months later. And even then all I was told was that my 'ticket was lost due to an issue with our support system'. Well, you don't say!

Away from the technical turmoil things were actually quite good. Valentine's got a four week stint for the first time since 2014, and saw a return to comprehensive coverage of the major seasonal themes. Valentine's also started another trend with it's limited time sale.

Valentine's Day 2016 sale items

There were 48 returning items, with 25% discounts applied to gem content, including three boxes available at 18 gems. After the unmitigated disaster that was Black Friday 2015 it's fair to say that players around the community were giddy at the impressive selection of lovey content included in this sale.

And there was a third trend kicked off during the Valentine's Day rush. The third update included 50% off the Tulip Crate, the first ever case of the price of a box being halved. It wouldn't be the last, with a crate generally offered at half price with every other update throughout the rest of the year. In all there were 20 individual box deals, thus giving us a superb chance to bag a rare decoration while not burning a hole in the pocket. Of course the boxes have also featured heavily in the seasonal sales over the last few months - more on that later!

Enticing deals have never been far away in 2016, with the Value Packs also making a triumphant return. From February through to June they were a weekly occurrence, before drying up completely.

Ice Cream Parlor Value Pack

The Value Pack including the Ice Cream Parlor remains the last one, and although it looks like Storm8 may have moved on from this feature, they did fall out of circulation for a few months once before so it's certainly possible we could see them again. Given the need to spend real money I can't say I've missed them, with my preference for the focus to stay on discounting gem items.

Into March then, and the themes were widespread, including Western, bees and racing. Opinion on each varied from player to player - I was fairly content with all of them and particularly impressed by the pricing which was attractive. The best example of why is the racing update whose most expensive addition was the Hot Rod Cafe, and yet it was only 15 gems. Compared to some of the monster costs for premier items recently this was bliss.

Back-to-back box updates at the end of March should have been a downer, but in truth they were both decent efforts as far as crates are concerned. Indeed the Sock Hop Crate was strong enough for me to later take a dip, with the Crooner coming my way. He's now a permanent resident at The Garlic Tree, blowing a vocal gasket daily.

My decision to open the Sock Hop Crate was influenced by a new project - The Chemist, the Cat and the Time Machine.

Overview of basement of The Garlic Tree in introduction to
The Chemist, the Cat and the Time Machine

This ambitious enterprise consumed my life for several months, with each week bringing with it a new destination in history as the time-hopping duo searched for new and exciting recipes to bring back home. My restaurant received a total makeover every Tuesday, with 25 million coins and 490 gems spent across the complete adventure. I'm not sure I'll ever take on such a challenging project again but it was great fun to do full redesigns instead of the usual small changes.

On we go to April, and consecutive country themed updates were hits. First up was Australia which had been craved by players for so long. It is one of the biggest markets for the game, and so it was immensely satisfying to see so many positive reactions to a range of Aboriginal stuff which was well put together.

Following this were the Spanish themed goals, which were the first to be released on the third Wednesday of the month. Consequently there was a six week gap between goal updates - the longest there's ever been - but for me it was well worth the wait.

Items from Spanish themed update as shown on Storm8 Blog

The Flamenco Dancers and Spanish Fountain were the standouts in a beautiful update which goes down as one of my favourites of the year. And the Flamenco Table from this update was the most significant for me - it has become the table of choice in the main section of The Garlic Tree outside of seasonal makeovers.

From one high to another, with the high end dining series. There were three updates in all as we make our way into May, including a goal set, and these updates also involved new content which have become mainstays of my place, such as the Fancy Waitress and Fancy Waiter. On the other hand it wasn't until decorating for Christmas that I finally brought the final goal prize out of storage, but the Fine Drinking Machine is an absolutely stunning piece which has to go down as one of the all-time great goal prizes.

Patience was also necessary when it came to the Chic Crate.

Notification for release of Chic Crate

It may have usurped the Classic Kitchen as my favourite box in the game, with so many lavish prizes really capable of lifting my kitchen area, but those 50% off box sales had me holding back. It proved a wise move given what landed on Black Friday, and although my openings didn't yield the finest of results it was enough to inspire a kitchen renovation.

Over summer, updates were a little all over the place with some really odd ones including chimps and pizza, pop art and curios cabinets. Nevertheless there were some big successes too, chief among which was the Father's Day quest in June. The High Top Seating Area and BBQ Island made for an excellent combination and the theme as a whole was well received given that Father's Day had largely been neglected over the years.

Also in June was a lemon themed update which in isolation wasn't all that interesting given that it was relatively sparse and provided a sour taste of what was to come with a 63 gem floor decoration.

Items from lemon themed update as shown on Storm8 Blog

However there was a positive headline to be had as the Lemonade Fountain became the first non-goals appliance to be added in more than three months. Sadly it would be another three before the next, but this drought does now seem to have been put to bed with regular update appliances becoming norm from Autumn onward.

Strong goal updates are becoming a recurring theme in this review, and the next couple didn't disappoint either. Camping in July and the laboratory in August were both given plenty of praise from the players, and although the camping theme may not have been the optimum choice for July, it certainly provided no shortage of inspiration for lots of wild and wonderful restaurant designs. The lab theme came in two instalments and was more about its potential, with the content ripe for Halloween.

The lab goals were the first to deploy a new structure which has been present ever since. The game's developers shook things up, with the most notable difference being that some dishes need to be cooked in more than just the one step.

Opening step from laboratory goals

Overall this leads to the goals taking longer to complete in their entirety (for example the lab goals required 40% more batches of food than the camping goals) and typically they're more expensive too.

At first this structure change was refreshing and demonstrated that Storm8 are still keen to invest time and effort into the game, but it has quickly become stale since the goal requirements are so repetitive. Not only are the tasks identical from one goal set to the next, sometimes the pricing is too, and that leads to a rather monotonous experience.

Moving into September and the sales season commenced. The updates themselves were wide-ranging but whether it be hot air balloons, San Francisco or breakfast they mostly failed to really inspire. The autumn sale stole the show with 43 items given that now familiar orange border, including some real favourites such as the Fall Garden and Autumn Party.

Notification for Autumn 2016 sale

Prolonged sales continued throughout the remaining months of 2016 with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas specials each ensuring that players had lots of opportunity to bag a classic decoration from yesteryear. The best was saved for last with the Christmas sale encompassing 148 different items, a staggering figure which is a Restaurant Story record by a country mile.

Returning to autumn, the harvest theme was the most regular with three dedicated updates scattered across the season. A goal set in September was the highlight thanks to the hugely popular Grape Pergola and Organic Stand. My only concern now is that having also had plenty of air time in previous years, the harvest theme has now been exhausted, even if it does bring out the best in the game's designers.

 Year in review posts

 02/01/16 Year in review 2015
 03/01/15 Year in review 2014
 28/12/13 Year in review 2013

Sandwiching the autumn updates was Halloween which only spanned two weeks - a set of goals and a box. We had to wait until 18th October for anything new which demonstrates the downside of moving the goals to the middle of the month. Lucky then that November and December saw another switch with the monthly challenge coming on the second Wednesday! For Halloween the content was okay without really setting the pulse racing - my previous complaints about decor not being as scary as in the past were haunting my posts at the time, but at least we did have the sale.

Onward, and for once the last update before Black Friday received a thumbs up. A shopping theme was unorthodox but at the same time a clever choice as the shopping season stepped up. I was unsure of it at the time, but in hindsight have to admit that it was pretty good, with my thoughts influenced by Jantiene Witzen's magnificent use of it at Fleet Street to enhance her shopping experience. This update did however provide us with one of several seriously steep additions of late, with the Shopping Scene weighing in at 60 gems. There have too many of these hopelessly dear buys recently - this is definitely something I'm hoping to see addressed in 2017.

Black Friday quickly followed, and had the lowest amount of fanfare and buzz in the build-up that I have yet seen. This was undoubtedly the result of the dark shadow still cast by 2015's washout, but given that it had been a year of sales I still harboured faint hopes. I wasn't disappointed.

Notification for Black Friday 2016

Almost every box ever seen was available at 50% off, a small number of floor decorations returned (including two old goal prizes re-engineered for newer players) and five new expansions were added.

Reception to this sale was mixed given the fact that boxes offer uncertainty and can quickly empty your wallet. I suspect the lack of a 40% off real money purchases deal also contributed to the grumpiness. I thought it was nice that we were able to pick and choose which themes and seasons to target rather than being forced to choose from a limited selection, but at the same time understood the frustration of others. Looking back though I still feel it was a very good sale in general.

After Black Friday was of course Christmas, spread over three weeks with two regular updates including some really nice decor. Once again a mega sale papered over any cracks in the new stuff, but in truth I felt it was all decent enough, with the elf workshop theme particularly strong since it was original which is not that easy for an annual theme covered so extensively over the years.

Items from elf workshop themed update
as shown on Storm8 Blog

And we closed out with a New Year based update earlier this week which reminded me so fondly of those high end dining updates from earlier in 2016. So much glitz and glamour, and it is not only perfect for New Year but also for party themes at any time of your choosing.

Wow that was some journey! It's also been a momentous year for this blog as the 500 posts milestone was struck and the viewership swelled like never before after an impressive Black Friday. I hope for more of the same in 2017 as we edge closer and closer to one million page views!

Overall there's no doubt in my mind that 2016 has been a real success. Of course there have a good few updates which can be filed under the label 'stinkers', and the occasional app updates continue to induce excessive amounts of head shaking. But there have been no shortage of updates which have hit dizzying heights and left us eager for more. And the generous sales have been terrific too, with Storm8 finally taking on board some of the feedback from players and making use of their rich backlog of vintage content.

And so we're done. So long 2016 - may 2017 raise the bar yet further! Have a smashing New Year everyone and all the best in the coming year!