Chocolatier 2: Secret Ingredients (PC)
created by Big Splash Games, 2007

a casual game for a hardcore gamer

review written by: Gamer-girl

Click to download the demo

Casual games have become a ‘me-too’ market. After all, anything titled “_____ Mania” means you click a lot and a cute female of indeterminate age bustles around the screen, usually helping increasingly impatient customers with something or other. And customers (the real-life ones, I mean) don’t mind the copycats – they’re happy to have the same gameplay again and again.

As a result, the setting of a casual game can mean the difference between a hit and a flop. Cake Mania, Babysitting Mania, Nanny Mania ... it’s just a question of whether the masses prefer to bake cakes or take care of kids or clean. So I was reasonably skeptical when I checked out Chocolatier. After all, I didn’t want yet another casual ‘me-too’ title on my hands, as much as I love chocolate.

I was pleasantly surprised. The Chocolatier series is not a reheated version of any tired game mechanic. It’s actually rather fun, in a new and addictive way. Why? Well...

Also educational. Now I know Mahajanga exists!

Making a profit is fun.
Traveling the world is fun.

Buying low and selling high is the meat and potatoes of Chocolatier – buy cheap cacao beans and other ingredients, then sell the resulting chocolate to the fanciest shops. There is also a mini-game in which you load factory molds by firing various ingredients from a cannon. Your success in the minigame determines the weekly production of the factory.

Pew-pew cacao!

But the world of Chocolatier would be rudderless without the quest/plot system. You can only have one task at a time, usually given by people around the world that want you to take their recipe, make X boxes of it, and deliver them somewhere. Between doing fed-ex quests for strangers, though, the Baumeister family has its own story of romance, rebellion, and betrayal. Through the course of the game, you receive over sixty different recipes, and gaining more recipes gives you a higher ranking, which in turn allows you to discover more recipes. It’s a delicious cycle.

Chocolatier 2 also has a distinct advantage over its predecessor, in its chocolate tasting laboratory. Some of the abovementioned quests reveal secret ports, such as the Amazon or the Sahara, which offer ‘secret ingredients’, from fire ants to black tea. Taking these secrets to the laboratory and experimenting creates a wide range of weird-sounding desserts.

‘Creating’ new recipes is not a creative system – there are only so many ingredients to ‘invent’, and all of them have been predetermined. The lab assistant also gives you a few too many hints sometimes, telling you almost exactly what you need, step-by-step, to create a new flavor. With an infinite number of attempts possible, it can quickly become tedious instead of exciting.

I'm just glad my French assistant is cute. You should see the New Yorker...

Finding those side-quests can be similarly trying. The only way to find them is to click on every building when you’re in a port – most of which are filled with random strangers with nothing better to do than shout about how much they love chocolate. You end up reading the same 20 comments again and again, just in search of that elusive recipe you need to finish the game. And since Chocolatier 2 isn’t even listed on Gamefaqs yet, you might be frustrated for quite a while.

Luckily for us, no matter how casual it tries to be (lovely 2d illustrations, point-and-click interface, constant tips), the core complexity may appeal most to the hardcore market. The mini-game is challenging enough to make me pay attention, which would probably alienate their target market. And with two dozen ports (each with a unique combination of five to ten ingredients) and six factories (each with a different recipe they’re constantly manufacturing), I can see most Mania addicts getting overwhelmed or bored. But the rest of us can take a welcome break from our Civilizations and our Mass Effects and worry for a few hours about the price of cherries.

All in all, it’s an addictive experience, but one with just a little guilt. Don’t let your guildmates find out you took time off to make saffron truffles.