Flipline Studios' Papa is taking over the world, one digitally delicious time management simulation at a time, and this latest installment is his most soft, fluffy, and golden-brown-est endeavour yet! In Papa's Pancakeria, you're once again wrangled into running Papa's latest restaurant venture for him and the hungry customers headed for your counter don't care how inexperienced you are. Earn new toppings, even entirely new menu items, and decorate the shop to your heart's content... provided you can keep all your hungry customers happy, of course.
Don't worry if you've never flipped a flapjack; the first day has a tutorial that walks you through the basics. You've got three stations to contend with; ordering, grilling, and topping. It goes without saying that your customers are very particular about how they want their food, and you'll have to grill and then build to their specifications. If someone wants three pats of butter, for example, you can't just plop them down willy-nilly; you'll have to place them (and every other item) to cover the pancakes as evenly as possible. You'll definitely want to keep your customers happy, since the tip money they give you can be spent towards upgrades to make your life a little easier, or cosmetic enhancements like hats and posters. (That way when a customer is furious at you, you can just go, "Yeah, but how about this sombrero, eh? Eh?" That'll go over awesome.) Between stages, you'll also get a chance to play mini-games if you like, spending golden tickets for a chance to earn more cash or prizes. Of course... pancakes aren't all you'll have to contend with slinging if you want to make it to breakfast shop royalty.
Analysis: The Papa's series has been around for a long time, and it's always impressive whenever a series like this manages to keep going without feeling like it's just spinning its wheels. Flipline obviously knows the core gameplay that players love, and is absolutely amazing at dressing it up in new and interesting ways to keep it from feeling too samey or changing so much that the game loses what made its predecessors so great. While not that different in gameplay from other Papa's titles, Papa's Pancakeria introduces just enough to make you want to keep playing. The mini-games are mostly simple affairs, some better done than others, but the provide a nice break between levels.
Of course, it goes without saying that Papa's Pancakeria is also gorgeous. The visual style has barely changed since its humble cheesy beginnings, but is still as vibrant and colourful as ever. Don't let the cartoony style make you think it's easy; it's as easy as ever to overestimate your griddle-guardian capabilities and wind up with a bunch of burnt goods. (Mmmm, charred on the outside, raw on the inside! Just the way I like 'em!) If you didn't like the Papa's games before, this one won't offer up much to change your mind, but for fans of the series it's another great, high-quality installment packed with all the breakfast goodness you could want to get your stomach growling. Make ready your pancake flipper and don your paper hat... and then maybe draft a letter to a union or something because if this is how Papa gets all his employees, it's gotta be illegal.
Walkthrough Guide
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Papa's Pancakeria Tips and Tricks
There is NO PENALTY for discarding food, which isn't very realistic, but whatever, take advantage of it like so:
Go ahead and start things going before taking the first order. If you know the first order is going to order 3 pancakes, great, put on 3 pancakes, but if you're not sure, just put on a bunch of everything.
When dealing with the closer, try to make double their order, so that if you make a mistake in building, you can trash it and start again immediately.
Just in general make extras and toss the less-perfect ones!
All customers order the same thing every time except Jojo the food critic. This is important to know for one of the mini-games, so check the customer file frequently.
The target aiming system makes spreading toppings much easier in this game. Keep in mind that some toppings last longer than others; for example, chocolate chips are rather generous. So some toppings will cover more of the dish than others, and therefore you should draw a larger spiral.
Don't try to do an entire customer at once; that is, don't do everything for number one, then do everything for number two, etc. You need to work on several orders at once to be able to be efficient.
Organize your tickets when you are taking orders or presenting orders to customers, because you can't do anything else during that time. Organizing tickets at other times is a waste of time.
Symmetry/evenness is critical to your building score, but the game is pretty fair about it and doesn't mandate an axis. That is, if you have to put two banana slices on a pancake, you can put them on either a horizontal line or a vertical line from each other, and the game will count either as even placement.
You don't have to take things from the top of the stack. If you have both french toast and pancakes in your stack, for example, you can select just the french toast, regardless of where it is in the pile.
You don't actually have to have the order ticket up while you're making the order. If you know the order well-enough (like Rico's choco-fest) you might find it faster to make it from memory and simply grab the ticket when you've got it finished.
More coming soon. Feel free to share your own tips in the comments!
Posted by: joye
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March 6, 2012 1:02 AM