NEW GAME: Cafe World by Zynga

Alright guys, I've moved on to the next new Zynga game -- Cafe World. Since I just started playing, I'm only level 8, but I'll update on hints and ways to optimize (level up fast) whenever I get new insights. Once again, you want to cook food that gives you the most CP (aka XP, experience points) and coins in the least amount of time. You must take in time into account! Pot roast gives you back 3935 coins (5750-1800-15) after 2 days, but it has less "coin per time ratio" than hamburgers that give you back 22 (52-15-15) every 5 min. This is because a hamburger will [in theory] give you back a whopping 760,320 coins after 2 days -- if you keep playing non-stop for 2 days.

Thus, if you have time to play, the best food to cook will have the best "coin per time" ratio and the "CP per time" ratio, defined as follows*:

coin-per-time ratio = (income - coins to prepare + coins to clean up) / time ready

CP-per-time ratio = (CP to prepare + CP to serve) / time ready

What does the chart indicate if you want the most coins and CP? It means you should cook only hamburger every 5 minutes. However, most people can't play the game on a 24x7 basis. People need to sleep. For example, if you need to be away from the computer for 12 hours, then you can cook Cheesecake which will be done in 12 hours. It may have a much lousier coins/time and CP/time ratio than hamburgers, but at least you don't have to click every 5 minutes, and you get some return than doing nothing in the kitchen.

On the right side of your screen there is Buzz Rating which controls the rate at which people come into your restaurant. Buzz rating goes up when someone is served food quickly, and goes down if someone doesn't get food or can't sit down. The higher the buzz rating, the more customers/time you'll get. If you're worried about buzz rating and want to keep it high, make sure there are enough tables and chairs for everyone and that there is enough food to serve. If you're out of food (cooking time is too long), you can start cooking something, then visit a friend or exit, then come back to your kitchen-- the buzz rating will be the same as when you left. Likewise, you can put an object that blocks the door so no one can come in, thus no one will be angry about waiting for food inside your restaurant. Likewise, if you're going away for a while and not sure if you have enough dishes to serve to people, exit the game. The server will estimate your profit and keep serving out dishes without affecting your buzz rating.

I don't personally worry about buzz rating. It is in some way meaningless due to a "design flaw" in the game. Let's say you've cook 1000 dishes. Since each person takes about 27 seconds to finish their food, it'll take theoretically 27000 seconds (1000*27 seconds) or 450 minutes to finish all 1000 dishes assuming your buzz rating is high. You can actually get around by creating lots of tables+chairs, visiting a friend's cafe, then come back; you'll see most of the tables filled out instantly, and everyone will finish their food within 27 seconds. You can repeat this and your food will get consumed very quickly while your buzz rating goes up fast. ** ****

*Since you need to prepare the food (average 3 clicks per dish), there is time between serving an old dish and and cooking a new dish. Thus I've also factored in a minute of paused time in between serving an old dish and preparing a new dish.

**If you're a hacker, you can also download Cheat Engine and speed up the Flash engine by 5X or 10X and let people eat very quickly. The Cafe World server doesn't seem to have rate limiting built in [yet], and I'd imagine it's too expensive (space and bandwidth) to keep track of everything on the server. Using this method you can serve out hundreds of customers per minute. How to use Cheat Engine is beyond the scope of this blog, but if you're interested, feel free to Google help on it.

*** Note that you can't simply speed up the cooking time using Cheat Engine. The reason is the Cafe World server in San Francisco keeps track of when you started a dish and when you should have the dish available. Thus if you speed up the Flash engine, your Flash will think it is done, but none of the coins will actually register on the Cafe World server; your game will be out of sync.