Tag: Restaurant »

World Chef is a new resource management simulator by SocialPoint, the developer behind Dragon City and Monster Legends.

Rather than build a city, here you're tasked with increasing the wealth and fame of a restaurant. This involves serving up delicious dishes, keeping customers happy, and hiring the finest chefs.

There's no time management here though - unlike most other restaurant management simulators on mobile. Instead, World Chef is all about quality.

We wanted to learn more about World Chef, so reached out to the Head of Product, Alexandre Besenval, to discover it's biggest inspirations, what role you as a player perform, and the inspiration for the visual design.

Which games were World Chef's biggest inspirations?

"Of course we played a lot of other resource management games and figured out what they did well and where they went wrong.

"However, we drew most of our inspiration from old school resource management games on PC like Theme Hospital or Theme Park, which both included casual resource management and a big dose of humor."

Will there be any real celebrity cameos? If not, would this be something you're looking at doing in future updates?

"We would love that! It is something we definitely want to explore in the near future, but there are no specific plans at the moment."

Does the player merely manage the restaurant, or do they act as chef and serving staff as well?

"First of all, you’re an owner. You open your restaurant and equip it with everything it needs, from tables to fresh products, then you hire waiting staff and professional chefs from around the world - each of which has their own style and personality.

"You’re also an interior designer though. We have hundreds of decoration sets, wall styles and flooring that allow you to create different spaces and environments all in one restaurant!

"Lastly, you manage the restaurant’s activity, handling the ingredients your chefs use - as well as serve dishes when they’re ready. You control the whole experience from start to end!"

Who would you say is the primary audience for World Chef, and why?

"We picture our audience like the customers in our restaurant: multicultural and multigenerational.

"Maybe our main target could go from 20 to 50 years old, but it’s such an easy to access game that everyone can play. Foodies will love it!"

What inspired the visual design?

"We love the feel of Pixar movies and modern cartoons. It’s very lively and dynamic, there’s always something going on to look at."

World Chef is out now in the App Store [download] and Google Play [download].

World Chef is a brand new resource management game by SocialPoint, the experienced developer behind Dragon City and Monster Legends.

You'll create and manage every aspect of your own restaurant, from naming it to hiring professional chefs. Then, once you've turned a profit, you can use it to purchase decorations and hire the most talented chefs from across the world.

Chefs will trade the finest ingredients with their friends, which unlocks brand new dishes you can serve to your customers. Satisfy these and your restaurant's fame will increase which can, eventually, lead to visits from esteemed celebrities.

Develop a rapport with these celebrities and you can hold an exclusive party for them in your dedicated event space - the pool-party area.

If you find yourself running low on resources, you can connect with your friends on Facebook, Game Center, or Google Play Services, and trade ingredients to give you a boost.

To date, a fair few restaurant simulators have had a time management focus where you're trying to serve as many customers as possible to a strict time limit. That's not the focus of World Chef though. It's, instead, all about creating the most prestigious restaurant you can.

If you've got a hankering to build your own restaurant, why not check out World Chef. It's available from the App Store [download] or Google Play [download]right now.

This article is sponsored as part of Steel Media Preferred Partners.

Urbanspoon is one of the best-reviewed apps on the App Store for finding restaurants, and its millions of users have provided countless reviews for countless different eateries; you won't be disappointed if you go to Urbanspoon to find a great nearby place to grab some lunch. But until recently the app was still sporting an old, clunky, pre-iOS 7 user interface. In the app's latest update, version 3.5.0, it finally got a refreshed user interface and icon to match the iOS 7 aesthetic.

Better late than never though, right? This update, on top of its redesigned UI, also packs a couple of new features. You can now filter restaurant choices based on price, cuisine, and meal services, and there's now a "nearby" button on the home screen of the app for quickly finding the nearest restaurants. Finally, you'll find the user bug fixes and improvements that come with almost every app udpate.

You can get the new version of Urbanspoon on the App Store for free.

A constant source of useful local information, YP Local Search & Gas Prices has recently been updated to be even more useful for those in need of information about nearby restaurants, other businesses and gas stations.

The latest update brings the ability to search restaurant menus for specific food items and receive relevant restaurant reviews. Something that's yet to be seen elsewhere in similar apps. Such a useful feature should ensure that users will always know everything possible before they check out somewhere tasty to eat at.

There's plenty of choice with the app offering over 13,000,000+ menu items from 300,000+ restaurants, each providing price details, ambience information, cuisine, user ratings and reviews, as well as photos and opening hours.

Alongside the recent addition of checking out cheap gas prices, this update should make YP Local Search & Gas Prices an essential tool for anyone who travels around regularly.

YP Local Search & Gas Prices is available now for free.

On Twitter, it's a dilemma that would be referred to as a 'first world problem' but it is sometimes difficult to decide which restaurant to go to for a meal. So many choices are out there and when it's a decision that has to be made between many friends, things can get tricky. Enter Hngry, an app that may lack an 'u' but certainly doesn't lack functionality.

At its most basic, Hngry lists all the restaurants that are nearby to the user's location, along with the ability to add opening hours, all in an attractive manner. Users can then choose from the list and flick through the selection, gradually narrowing down the selection before coming to a decision. For those with iPhone owning friends, they can share lists directly on individual devices using the Hngry app. The app can even find menu details for any restaurant on the list if one is available on the internet.

Once a decision has been made, users can dial the restaurant directly from within the app then Hngry offers a place to store order details for that meal and any helpful notes required. For those with favourite dishes, it makes it all the easier to check what meals were so nice the last time the user visited a place.

There's even the ability to take photos of a meal as a reminder of what was so tasty and Twitter integration ensures that sociable diners can share their choice.

Throughout, the app keeps track of how many times the user has visited a restaurant, making for an ideal guide at a glance as to what place is best for the user's tastes.

For those who dine out regularly, Hngry is a great resource that combines many useful meal planning features.

Hngry is available now, priced at $2.99.

In an ever frugal world, being able to save the pennies while not sacrificing enjoyment is a big thing. Along comes BiteHunter, an app that searches thousands of sources to bring its users the best dining deals all through a real-time interface.

Through the GPS functionality, users can view nearby deals on a map or via a list, then filter the results by price, rating, type of food and numerous other options.

BiteHunter promises more than 50,000 local deals in all covering the entire of the country. Daily deals such as those from Groupon and LivingSocial are implemented here as well as restaurants' tweets. Then the deals are divided up according to whether it's a deal for a specific day, a certain percent or amount off or simply if it's happy hour.

Food connoisseurs can always search for a specific restaurant too and then read reviews from multiple sources and see a menu. In some cases it's even possible to reserve a table right from the app.

BiteHunter looks like a great way of saving some precious pennies and it's a free download available now for all iOS devices.