Mini Café just showed up on the iOS App Store and it’s the first release from SGN after joining MindJolt. The game will be familiar to cafe game players, but the international makeup of the team lead to a design that puts ethnic variety at front and center. This, in addition to a couple other twists, offers something new to cafe game fans playing on their iPads.
In Mini Café, your job is to cook meals for your patrons and clean up the messes they leave behind. You’ll spend time building and designing your cafe while you master new recipes. This is familiar territory until you unlock the game’s ethnic features. While most cafe games offer international variety in decor, Mini Café is the first to award bonuses for sticking to a theme. If you want to create a Moroccan restaurant, you’ll start increasing your revenue and experience if you pump up the Moraccan decor. The themes range from Mexican to Japanese and match the cuisines you can choose to cook.
The SGN team is fairly international themselves. Based in Argentina, they’re a combination of Italians, Americans and Argentinians all headed by a German, Ulf Waschbusch. Ulf told us this international variety influenced Mini Café’s design as food is a common starting point when people from different cultures interact.
“Food is the first thing that people from different cultures can relate to, but rarely agree on,” says Ulf. “You can imagine the discussions on wether French cuisine is the richer one in flavor or whether it’s Japanese.”
Ulf went on to say that his own travels gave him perspective as well.
“Having lived in various places around the world myself (Germany, Turkey, the US, Singapore/Asia etc) I have come to appreciate the local flavors and decors that make a restaurant a true local experience”
In addition to the game’s ethnic feature’s, Mini Café adds a celebrity component. At times, a celebrity may drop in on your cafe. These celebrities require more attention than regular customers, but pleasing them earns you their picture on your wall. You can also invite friends from Facebook to drop in on your restaurant and earn their photo on your wall as well.
The game integrates both Facebook and Twitter and allows you to share updates about your restaurant. Mini Café’s Facebook integration also allows you to post photos of your restaurant to your wall.
If you’re ready to take on the role of international restaurateur, Mini Café is available in the iOS app store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
