Mmmmmm….. chocolate! I love chocolate. I’m one of the nine in every ten women in the world who adores the cocoa confections. You put chocolate in it, and odds are I’m all over it.

Platform: PC
ESRB: E
Genre: Casual Strategy
Number of Players: 1
Publisher: PlayFirst
Release Date: Jan 2009

Official Website

BUY

Chocolatier: Decadence by Design is technically the fourth game in the Chocolatier series, allowing the player to discover the delicious underbelly of chocolate confectioners. Your adventure starts in Zurich, where Alex Baumeister asks you to help her by running the factory while she searches for her husband, missing after WWII. The war has taken its toll on the Baumeisters, as many of their factories were refitted to accommodate ammunition production. It is up to you to bring back the prominence that Baumeister Confections once held.

In the beginning, your profits will come from creating scrumptious chocolate bars in the Zurich factory. Using your recipe book, select which type of bar you want to produce, making sure you have the necessary ingredients. Cocoa and coffee beans must be purchased from farmers in regions where they are grown, while fruits, nuts, and dairy items vary. Prices on all commodities fluctuate depending on whether or not they are in season.

Making Chocolate Mint Bars in Zurich

Each factory comes complete with its own mini-game. Spinning wheels rotate on a carousel in which you match up items needed by colour.  As shown on the right, you want to aim and shoot ingredients into the wheels. When the ingredients are colour coded (usually just red & blue), filling it with matching ingredients will give you a bonus. And don’t worry if you mix up the colours. You will still have the wheel count as a batch, it just won’t give you added batch bonuses. While most of them are similar to the Zurich factory, others may have added bonuses of a recycle bin or offer three “colour” coded wheels. Toronto’s coffee blend facility runs on a conveyor belt, and asks you to line up items as three of a kind.

Once you have started production, you will find your goods are in demand. You can sell your wares at the local confection shop, make a little more for items such as the coffee shop in Tangiers, or take personal requests from people around the globe. Personal requests can offer you money or new recipes in exchange for the right amount of sweets. To see which quests you have active, whether they be story or side orders, select the Q button located above your profits meter.

The Secret Test Kitchen

Every once in a while (usually after completing a certain amount of tasks for various board members) you will be given a page in the Recipe Book for your own unique creations. Each page can only be used once, so make sure you taste test your concoction for feedback. There are twelve opportunities for you to make some pretty awesome creations. You are limited only by what ingredients you have on hand when you visit the Test Kitchen. One bag is removed from your inventory but remains there without need to replenish. My big sellers where chocolates that combined with coffee or liquor and fruit.

In order to get the best prices for ingredients, make sure you check the markets and farmers every time you visit a location. If you see sugar on sale for $5-8/sack, snap up a few thousand bags worth. Doualan cocoa on sale for less than $150? Buy it in bulk as its a great cocoa for using in your personal creations as opposed to common cocoa beans. Certain ingredients will be unlocked once you perform certain tasks or earn a new recipe. You can also haggle with vendors, just be careful not to say the wrong thing!

Visit unique & exotic locations

Each factory makes cases on a per week basis. Plane trips to visit other locations range anywhere from one to three weeks (until you have enough money to buy your own plane). If Zurich is making 21 cases of Milk Chocolate Bars and you need 100 cases to fill an order, you’re going to have to fly around for a while. During these times, feel free to gamble a bit. There are two casinos for you to discover, should you choose to test Lady Luck. In order to access them, certain requests will need to be fulfilled.

Your road to becoming CEO is not an easy one. You are going to need to impress the board members, take over production at all six factories, and make sure you are selling a wide variety of products to your customers. Unless you are working towards filling an order, make sure you are regularly changing up what products your factories are working on.

San Francisco, Baby!

I devoted a good week of my life discovering local ingredients and building my Recipe collection and delivery cases of tasty treats to my customers. From San Francisco to Tokyo, Wellington to Kona and all points in-between, Decadence by Design was a relaxing way to unwind in the evenings. And now I anxiously await another sequal.