Welcome to the Wonderful World of Chocolate!
Generations ago, Baumeister Confections was founded by Marten Baumeister in Sydney, Australia. The company has (barely) survived for over a century, but now, in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, it faces its toughest time. Can you help the business stay afloat. Can you become a chocolatier?
Chocolatier: Decadence by Design has a rich backstory (no pun intended), especially for something as simple as a game about candy. The story kicks off with a beautiful expositional video reminiscent of the news reels of the 1950s. The video gives you the full history of the company and tells you where they stand now.
You really come to care about the employees and people you meet along the way, and more importantly, you begin to care about the company itself. You want the company to survive, and it becomes a little more than just a game.
A Thriving World
The game looks great. The city screen, which acts as a travel hub, is bright and alive with cars actually driving up and down the road. The buildings sport a wonderful color palette and the mountains in the background, which I assume are the Swiss Alps, look as majestic as ever. This feels like a real world.
Willa Wonka, You Ain't
Don't let the movies fool you; making chocolate takes a lot of work. You need to be quick on your feet, sharp as a tack, and having good aim helps, too. While I would wager a guess that this isn't how chocolate is actually made, it sure is a lot of fun.
Before you begin the process of making chocolate, you need to decide what kind you're going to make. You start off with the recipe for basic chocolate bars, but you'll quickly accumulate more. To make basic bars, you only need sugar and cacao.
Assembly can be pretty frantic. You'll need to shoot ingredients from your injector into the proper trays as they rotate around. If you fire and miss a tray, you'll waste the ingredient. If you miss eight times, production will stop.
Here's the really cool part. Production speeds up and slows down according to how well you're doing. When you first try a recipe, you need to set the production rate. After you do so, it's all automated thereafter. If you happen to make 20 cases of basic bars, that's how much your factory will produce in a week. The sky is the limit here, so don't be afraid to push yourself again and again and watch those production numbers skyrocket!
A Top Tier Chocolatier
Chocolatier: Decadence by Design is a great, multi-layered game. It successfully combines two genres - puzzle and business sim - into something that's a lot deeper than you would originally think. There are so many ways to run your business and you'll always wonder if you made the right choice. Not only will it take you a good while to complete the game, it's something that you'll come back to time and time again.
