Cakes and Cookies - awesome new mechanics #2🧁

Hi Chefs!
From the previous post you already know everything about the process of baking and decorating your fancy customised desserts.🎂 This time we'd like to tell you a bit more about the brand-new rating system, which will allow you to sell and receive a score for virtually any pastry you make using a variety of ingredients and decorations.

Let's start the list of changes by introducing the smartphone, which replaces the laptop known from the base game.📱 The smartphone allows you to purchase utensils, cake pans and other supplies, browse recipes or take special orders. You can also use it to check on social media to see the trending hashtags, your confectionery popularity and to upload photos of your best desserts to receive some extra exposure. The smartphone can be accessed at any moment by pressing a single button, so checking on it doesn't break the flow of the game!

The best way to start each day is to check what are the 🏷️5 trending daily hashtags. Daily hashtags are randomly chosen from the following categories:

Taste - related to the flavors (#Sweet, #Sour, #Fruity and so on)
Texture - related to the texture of the cake (#Crunchy, #Moist, #Fluffy, etc.)
Ingredient - based on the ingredients used in the cake (#Chocolate, #Cocoa, #Honey and many more)
Diet - they result from the certain combination of used ingredients or the lack of said ingredients (#Sugar-free, #Vegan, #Variety and so on)
Theme hashtags are also applied when you decide to follow a certain recipe, which will result in assigning tags like #Brownie, #Apple pie, #Cheesecake, etc. If you decide to create something unique, your creation will receive a #Homemade tag.
Special - tags assigned to desserts using certain decorations(for example #Birthday, #Wedding, #Halloween)

Additionally, there are 2 hidden categories of hashtags, which cannot be drawn as daily hashtags:

Complexity is used to determine the amount of work you've put in decorating the pastry. There are 5 degrees of complexity from #Simple all the way up to #Masterpiece. The more complex your cake is, the more positive reactions you'll get from selling it!
Shape tags depend on the type of cake pan you'll use. They don't affect the score but might be requested when accepting special orders. Example hashtags could be #Oval, #Star, #Heart and so on.

Daily hashtags help you plan your work for the day and determine what sort of desserts you’re going to make. The more daily hashtags you manage to include in your pastry, the higher are it's chances of being sold and receiving more positive reactions, resulting in increasing your confectionery popularity.
For example, if your daily hashtags are: #Nut-free, #Animals, #Edible pearls, #Fruity, #Chocolate, you could prepare a cake without using any nuts, inject some filling (preferably fruit or chocolate flavored!), add some edible pearls topping and decorate it using animal figurines, various fruits and even chocolate! 🍫🦊🍓

Of course, the more complex your cake is (determined by the number frostings/icings, whipped cream, toppings/dustings, fruits and figurines used), the more reactions it will receive. Cake containing 5/5 daily hashtags will have the highest potential to receive numerous positive reactions. Alternatively, you could prepare a number of less complex pastries containing only a few daily hashtags or even a dozen of donuts or cupcakes with just 1-2 suggested hashtags. There are many ways you can try to make your customers happy and it's up to you to find out which one works best for you!👨‍🍳

To break your daily routine, every once in a while your confectionery might have an opportunity to accept a special order! The more popular you get, the higher the chances for receiving such orders will be. Special orders will require you to prepare a specific cake in a given period of time. There are no penalties for declining such orders but completing them will result in a substantial popularity increase.
An example of such order could be a cake with the following requirements📝:

#Homemade cake
Must include the following hashtags #Fit, #Gluten-free, #Cheesy, #Creamy, #Chocolate
Square-shaped
2 layers: large and medium
2 different colours of frosting/icing
Must be decorated with a Gingerbread Man figurine
The level of complexity must be at least #Advanced

Whether or not you'll participate in any extra activities, by the end of each day you should place your pastries at the display, so they can be sold to the customers. The clients will purchase and rate your cakes and cookies depending on how well they match the daily trends and also how well they've been baked. Underbaked or burnt pastries will receive negative reactions (either a Sad or Angry face) and all the other sold pastries will receive 1 out of 4 positive reactions (Like, Wow, Haha and a Heart). Don't forget that you can also upload a photo of the day with your best cake to receive some extra reactions and further progress in the ranks of top confectioneries!🏆

As you can see, Cakes and Cookies introduces a bunch of fun mechanics and unlocks new levels of almost unlimited creativity. The expansion will be available on May 28th. We can't wait to see you creating your own fancy desserts!🍰

For those of you, who really can't wait to start their sweet adventures, we'll be running another developer stream on Steam this Friday at 6PM CEST. See you there!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1227350/Cooking_Simulator__Cakes_and_Cookies/