A beautifully crafted take on the Serve, Cook and Collect game genre. Diner Dash lovers will love Chocolate Tycoon.
the history
Cocoteenie, an amateur chocolate chef, begins a quest to save the town of Choco Choco from the tyrannical King Choco. By improving his skills and equipment step by step, Cocoteenie plans to eventually create a masterpiece that will make King Choco’s mouth water and convince him to abandon his evil ways.
how to play
The game in Chocolate Tycoon is divided into 2 parts, Day and Night. During the day, his chocolate shop opens and he is taken to a mini action game where he makes and sells his chocolates.
To the right of the screen is a box divided into nine smaller squares. In each one, a random ingredient appears, cocoa, milk or dark chocolate. As you touch each ingredient, it is added to your mixing bowl that you use to make your chocolates. Depending on the components of the mixture, white, milk or dark chocolates will be produced.
Each type of chocolate has a special mix that once brought together will produce higher quality golden chocolates. These are ready to be sold to customers who show up at your store. Quick service to a customer will increase the chances of a variety of item drops like the ‘Time Limit’ increase, the ‘Customer Patience’ modifier, or even small gifts you can open for a mystery gift.
Additional equipment can be purchased with the coins that will be awarded to you after each level ends. You will also need to buy ingredients to run your business and pay taxes at the end of each month.
When the night comes, you can do marketing, customer service, learn new recipes, and make investments to further improve the sales and quality of your chocolates. This adds a brilliant edge to the role-playing part as you interact with many characters in the village. A client list is also available that lists a character’s likes and dislikes, as well as the strength of their friendship with you.
A unique feature of this game is designing your own chocolate. Not only do you add bits of fruit or nuts to your chocolate, which is also available, but you also draw lines, create specific shapes, and customize your own design. I personally find this really cool.
After you create or buy ready-made designs, you’ll need to learn how to make them. The learning process in this game is actually another minigame where you tilt your phone in the version directions your ‘Choki’ (more on Choki below) needs to go. Completing the route within the given time limit successfully commits this layout to memory. Using a particular recipe for a period of time increases your ability to make it as dictated by the recipe’s level.
Do you remember the 3 little critters under your boxes during store hours that gobble up your ingredients to produce chocolates? Those are Chokies and they hatch from the eggs you get as a gift or from the mating of Chokies.
There are various qualities of eggs, such as common Rotten Eggs, rare Golden Eggs, and even rarer Special Eggs. Each egg has a duration that indicates how long it takes to hatch into a Choki. Chokies have important abilities that will help you in your game and naturally the rarer a Choki is, the stronger the ability it has. Chokies can also gain experience and levels, which grant various benefits, such as increasing the rate at which you produce chocolates.
It’s really impressive how detailed this game is with so many avenues to explore and nurture.
graphics
Chocolate Tycoon is designed with a lovable environment and characters that it’s almost impossible not to like. His cartoon art is visually appealing and fits his genre very well. What I liked the most was how the 2D buildings and characters were displayed as standing pieces of cardboard that were left in different rows to give a 3D feel to the player.
Game interface and ease of use
Chocolate Tycoon uses a clean and simple interface that is really easy to use. Tapping an icon once lights it up and gives it a title while tapping it twice executes the command. Showing an icon’s name without having to tap on it first could be an improvement, but there’s really nothing else I care about.
Sound
There are only 2 soundtracks as far as I could tell, but they were wonderfully designed to fit the theme of the game and the huge variety of sound effects had a pretty good impact on the game in my opinion.
Verdict
Chocolate Tycoon adds massive amounts of content and gameplay to the usual serving, cooking, and gathering action genre. While this is a must-have addition for a Diner Dash lover, it’s also a great place to start for players who have never tried the genre.