Café World has a new look

// June 13th, 2011 // General

Since I’ve made a website to cater for those who play Zynga’s Café World (no pun intended), it would be negligent of me to fail to mention that the game has been given a bit of a spring clean this evening! A couple of months ago, we were given an entirely new cookbook in the game, which helped fellow chefs find the next dish they want to cook a little quicker than before (although perhaps not as well as I’ve done it). Now the rest of the game has been spruced up and I, for one, welcome it.

Naturally, the update will have been staggered along the many thousands (if not millions) of players throughout the world, so not everyone will see the update yet. For those of you who haven’t seen it, take a look at the video they posted on YouTube.


Preview video of Café World’s new look

The first thing you’ll notice is that all the buttons along the bottom of the viewing screen have now disappeared. They’ve now been consolidated into a series of grouped buttons that can be found in the top and bottom right hand corners of the screen. Although this cleans up the clutter, it means you need an extra mouse click in order to spice your stoves or view your cookbook. This isn’t good for those using touch pads, and certainly to anyone new to the game who wish to save their progress before leaving. Zynga has hidden options such as save, quality, music and sound, in an all-encompassing “Settings” button in the bottom right corner. It’s ridiculously small, and really you’d have to know it was there to use it. However, all the menus and indicators have been spiced up too (again, no pun intended) and have been given a nice clean look and are now more consistent – in style – with each other.

The biggest advantage of all this cleaning up is that the game is now noticeably faster. Not necessarily faster to load (that’s yet to come) but certainly runs smoother, which is a big advantage to those with less powerful computers. Granted my computer is no spring chicken, but nor is it a slow poke. I noticed the difference straight away! I imagine this is down to the game’s UI being completely re-written. Not only will the developers have left out redundant code, but they’ll have also made the code for existing features of the game to be smaller and more efficient, hence effecting runtime. I won’t be alone in saying that this has been long awaited by players.

Current loading screen for Café World, outlining future additions to the game

Other improvements Zynga have in store for us is a full screen option and larger café expansions. I’m not too bothered about full screen, although it’d be nice to have the option nonetheless. I tend to have Café World on one monitor while I work on something else on my other monitor, so it should be ok. Larger café expansions would be very welcome though! I’m currently on level 350 and, because of all the new stuff Zynga’s introduced into the game, I’m quickly running out of space! Here’s hoping they’ll get their finger out and include these additions very soon.

Leave a Reply