Suggestions so far (update will hopefully come)

[Geff]

Before I write a bad review I thought twice and hope there will be updates?

Right now this is not a "restaurant simulator" but just a cooking simulator.

Some points:
1.) General:
Everything besides cooking is done automatically without/against my will. The waitress just came in with even more waitresses (3 waiter personnel for my tiny restuarant, but I dont have to pay salaries for them for some reason).I dont have to pay Kassim. He gives me tipps, It seems we were at same cooking school. But this story (the past, the relation to him) is not even minimally explained. Could be much better.

2.) Cooking:
a) Even the cooking is made too easy. It is not possible to put the wrong ingredients in the pan/pot. Not possible to make the meal in the wrong equipment (e.g. in pan instead of pot).

b) I always get shown the necessary ingredients. Could be ok for tutorial but for real game it should not be there. It's more realistic and more demanding to have that in mind and to make the meals without any visual virtual help.

c) happiness of customers:
I can forget to put salt/pepper at all and still get a B-grade. My technical performance was B in one case and customers called it "excellent". I can constantly serve cold meals without real big complaints.
Kassim said customers will be more demanding in future with better meals and better restaurant. That's ok but right now it is just too easy to please the customers.

3.)Management/financials:
a) I miss a real overview about financials.
In computer and in catalogue I find, almost hidden, my amount of money. I want an overview with earnings and spendings. I want to adjust the prices of my meals. Right now they are made automatically.
I want to pay my personell! I want to decide whcih and how many I hire.

b)
I dont have an exact overview of the ingredients I have. They are just summarized (fish, meat, vegetables,..). Should be much more details. Also here is help a bit bad. E.g. I want to know how many beans I get when I order a pack of beans. Only later I saw that 1 pack gives 4 cooked beans.

4.) finally:
like for every simulator: the more realistic, the more details, the more demanding, the BETTER.
This game has potentials, a nice atmosphere. But many details are missing.

[greyphoenix]

Originally posted by Geff:

3.)Management/financials:
a) I miss a real overview about financials.
In computer and in catalogue I find, almost hidden, my amount of money. I want an overview with earnings and spendings. I want to adjust the prices of my meals. Right now they are made automatically.
I want to pay my personell! I want to decide whcih and how many I hire.

For me management and finances are both something that I wish were emphasized a little more in the game. I'd also like an overview of earnings and spending. In know we can adjust the prices of the meals but not to specific number.

[roggek]

3) Management/Financials:

Maybe we should ask Nacom to develop a "Boss Life: Office accountant"...

[nygirl976]

I completely agree with this. It is definitely more a cooking simulator than a restaurant simulator. I do feel like the game is lacking in the simulation all around beyond cooking. No one is looking to sit down and do finances in a game for hours on end, but it sure would be nice to have some control over it and to be able to see our finances in more details. Why are we not paying rent, or utilities etc? Why can we not hire our own staff, pay them? Why can't we get a dishwasher?

Money feels like a struggle at first but then almost seems pointless as you start serving better meals and begin to make more. Aside from buying food, upgrades, equipment and aesthetics for your restaurant, there's no other point to it. Buying ingredients feels almost ridiculously cheap, even for the "better" suppliers compared to what you make in profit from the food.

It would also be nice to have more control over our chefs, the ability to pay them, being able to assign them roles to help prep or do dishes during a service not just pick one and that's it for the service. I love the banter that occurs randomly, but maybe the ability to interact with them more would be nice.

I feel the front end is lacking as well. You can expand your restaurant to have more tables yet the most tables that are ever filled at one time seems to be 2 maybe 3 and the rest of the staff is kinda just standing around. So that seems pointless to me as well. It doesn't have that exhilarating environment of having a full dining room for service and instead feels like I should be on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares show where you have an empty dining room and staff hanging around doing nothing.

I really enjoy the cooking part of this game, the ability to plate things the way you want (though I wish some of the restrictions on the plating were lifted and you could put more of something on) but (and i know this has been discussed a lot) not being able to work on new recipes outside prep time is a hindrance as well. I just feel like there is no end goal (other than getting a Michelin star) as if its uncompleted.

Would I give it a bad review, probably not. However, it definitely needs some polish and I really hope the developer takes everything the community is saying into account and works on this game a little further. For the price point of the game I feel its certainly lacking.

[AustriaGamer1]

You're absolutely right, that's exactly how I would have described it, there are simply too many things missing to call it a "restaurant" simulation.

It had so much potential but unfortunately far too little was made of it.

I think we don't really have to hope for updates because there have been almost no patches or updates so far.

What I personally really miss is a recipe editor to create your own recipes.

[karinundmaedels]

The game doesn't want to be a finance simulator. (Imo the game would be even better if it would have no money at all, and have a different progression system than money. The current implementation of money is really barebones and I'm not sure why it is even in the game)
I think the game fits regardless to the title "chef life: a restaurant simulator", because you're doing a lot which a simple cook wouldn't do. I would say it's a cooking simulation + a working distribution simulation + a bit of story. You are the boss and you tell the others what and when to cook.

[milkygirl]

One of the reasons I'm enjoying this game is because it's easy/relaxing, but your thoughts are completely valid! There are just a couple of points I'd like to mention.

Originally posted by Geff:

b) I always get shown the necessary ingredients. Could be ok for tutorial but for real game it should not be there. It's more realistic and more demanding to have that in mind and to make the meals without any visual virtual help.

You can always go to your recipe book and select "unpin". That will make it so you can't easily see what you need in the upper right hand corner, even during service. Or are you talking about when you go to use stations (like the blender, stove, etc)?

Originally posted by Geff:

b)
I dont have an exact overview of the ingredients I have. They are just summarized (fish, meat, vegetables,..). Should be much more details. Also here is help a bit bad. E.g. I want to know how many beans I get when I order a pack of beans. Only later I saw that 1 pack gives 4 cooked beans.

This information is also in the recipe book. If you look at the long-form recipe, it tells you how many of a cooked product you will end up with. Like the recipe for green beans has a "4" in the upper right hand corner of the cooked beans icon.

Very easy to overlook!

[gaetano.661]

Who want some dessert recipes?

[roggek]

Originally posted by gaetano.661:

Who want some dessert recipes?

Maybe in a future DLC, first the devs must sort out the core gameplay and bugs...

[marilynkittykat]

Originally posted by gaetano.661:

Who want some dessert recipes?

that would be great, it feel like it's a big thing missing in the game

[ModerNertum]

Originally posted by Geff:

Before I write a bad review I thought twice and hope there will be updates?

Right now this is not a "restaurant simulator" but just a cooking simulator.

Some points:
1.) General:
Everything besides cooking is done automatically without/against my will. The waitress just came in with even more waitresses (3 waiter personnel for my tiny restuarant, but I dont have to pay salaries for them for some reason).I dont have to pay Kassim. He gives me tipps, It seems we were at same cooking school. But this story (the past, the relation to him) is not even minimally explained. Could be much better.

2.) Cooking:
a) Even the cooking is made too easy. It is not possible to put the wrong ingredients in the pan/pot. Not possible to make the meal in the wrong equipment (e.g. in pan instead of pot).

b) I always get shown the necessary ingredients. Could be ok for tutorial but for real game it should not be there. It's more realistic and more demanding to have that in mind and to make the meals without any visual virtual help.

c) happiness of customers:
I can forget to put salt/pepper at all and still get a B-grade. My technical performance was B in one case and customers called it "excellent". I can constantly serve cold meals without real big complaints.
Kassim said customers will be more demanding in future with better meals and better restaurant. That's ok but right now it is just too easy to please the customers.

3.)Management/financials:
a) I miss a real overview about financials.
In computer and in catalogue I find, almost hidden, my amount of money. I want an overview with earnings and spendings. I want to adjust the prices of my meals. Right now they are made automatically.
I want to pay my personell! I want to decide whcih and how many I hire.

b)
I dont have an exact overview of the ingredients I have. They are just summarized (fish, meat, vegetables,..). Should be much more details. Also here is help a bit bad. E.g. I want to know how many beans I get when I order a pack of beans. Only later I saw that 1 pack gives 4 cooked beans.

4.) finally:
like for every simulator: the more realistic, the more details, the more demanding, the BETTER.
This game has potentials, a nice atmosphere. But many details are missing.

Your 2 b) point is actually not totally accurate. You are always shown the ingredients because your chef knows that recipe. That is realistic enough for a Sim game. A rl chef would not screw up a recipe because they want to run a succesfull business. However, recipes must be upgraded to compensate for it (meaning the more you make them the better you will be at making them, just like rl cooking). There is a fine line between what is reality and Sim games. Sim games attempt to replicate the reality as closely as possible without being boring. However, if you want that to happen there should be an option to switch that on or off in the menus for those that dont want to see those. For those that do they should have the same choice of being allowed that option as well. For example, people who play the game more casually wont remember the recipes once they return to the game so thats why the feature exists as well. To alliviate frustration.

[Pooch]

Couldn't agree more with this post. Devs please look in to this!