The latest story in the series is this one "Omoide no Shokudo Monogatari" which features a old grandmother having her own shokudo (cafeteria... or perhaps a rundown restaurant would be a little closer to heart?) in the showa era. In this shokudo she listens to the complains and grieving of her customers, which sets this up for a subtle depressing and touching undertones.
In this shokudo, only the food you put out will be picked by the customers, as those will be the "choices" that they have. There isn't really any need to rush to get food out. Remember. this is a relaxing game with relaxing music.
There are various choices of food you can put out, however that is limited by space. As you can see in the image above, you can only put from 2 food choices out (onigiri and egg) or up to 6 food choices if you upgrade with more tables. Of course, there isn't just 2 food choices and you can unlock more the more you cook.
Looking at the image above, you can get level-up on items which you cook. For instance, to get the onigiri to level 3, I will need to make it 3 more times (00/03) whereas for the egg, to get from level 1 to 2, I will need to make it for a total of 2 times but I have already made it 1 time (01/02).
Getting level-ups on food may unlock other food items. As you can see from the 4th food item, getting the egg to level 5, you will unlock ham cutlets.
There are different tabs--all, rice, main, side dishes, and drinks--and serving one or more dishes from each of these specific groups will bring in more money. The explanation is that because customers don't tend to drink 2 types of soups so having something like 1 rice and 1 soup will obviously bring in more money than letting the customer pick 1 out of 2 soups, thus ultimately only getting 1 soup.
To prepare each food item, you will need money and stamina. In this case, 100 coins and 1 stamina is needed. Furthermore, every time this is prepared, 2 will be made.
In addition, you can even watch some advertisements to get stuff like Fever mode, more coins, or some stamina replenishment. These advertisements don't take up a lot of time and are good to use if you are grinding on the game.
These are some of the upgrades you can get in-game itself. These are from the shop where you use coins you earn from in-game and these upgrades cannot be bought using real currency. These upgrades are things like increasing the number of spaces to put more varieties of food types, adding more table seats, adding bar counter seats, decreasing food preparation time, etc.
The image above shows the upgrades you can get with real money, such as letting the gain in stamina be doubled, XP gain from making food becomes double, increasing the speed of fever mode by 2 times. These upgrades are certainly nice to get but by no means a necessity.
Then there is also the catalog of customers and their percentage of satisfaction. Customers that you have never encountered before are still a silhouette.
As the satisfaction level increases, stories will be unlocked as the customer will then feel more at home and hence open up to the granny owner more.
Making items the particular customer likes will help to increase their satisfaction more. Besides, you can also note down which days the customer is likely to come. In the case of this school girl, that's the days marked in red--Monday and Friday.
When there is a dialogue event, a "..." speech bubble will appear above the character's head and when you click it, you will be brought to the next screen.
Here you can read the story they have to tell, but unfortunately, it is only in Japanese.
When you finish the whole customer's story, they might even give you a "gift"!
~ Reina-rin
