It mystifies me that it's a 2011 Indiecade finalist, however there is nary an element here I haven't seen in other games, and while it's not badly done, and the developer is independent, it hardly seems in keeping with the spirit of the festival.Īs a foodie myself, it also, I'm afraid, does not go where I want it to go - although, to be sure, I find myself thinking this playing virtually every business sim I've encountered. It's not as deep a game as Restaurant Empire, nor as original a design as Diner Dash, but it does not totally suck. It's mildly entertaining, and because of the variety of elements involved - recipes, customer preferences, the decorative game, kitchen equipment and staff - there's a fair bit of depth from a sim perspective.
When I say "tuned to a casual audience," I mean things like "to train a chef from a D cook for produce to a C cook, you click and pay $100 it happens instantly." Between days, you unlock new recipes, train staff, modify decor and table arrangments, hire new staff, and so on. It's tuned to a casual audience, so pretty easy, but with a continuing grind while open, all you do is seat guests at tables that fit the party that arrives (no color-coding ala Diner Dash), which is simple if tedious. You start with one plain vanilla restaurant in a restaurant row that has seen better days as you increase in "stars" (Michelin, presumably), you can reopen other restaurants in the row, with different sorts of cuisine. Bistro Boulevard is a kind of remix of Trevor Chan's Restaurant Empire and Diner Dash.