Cooking Craze vs Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands
Cooking Craze
Cooking Craze is a very addictive and yet surprisingly easy-to-play time management game developed and published by Big Fish Games. Featuring a linear progression path resembling what you'd see in a standard match-3 games, Cooking Craze is so different from all the other similar cafe or restaurant-themed time management games mainly through its unique gameplay - it's very simple and well-suited for the mobile market. As opposed of having to drag and drop stuff on a small mobile screen, the game is designed so that you can simply tap once to prepare the foodstuff, another 1 or 2 times to add "toppings", and once more to serve the food to your customers. Coins that are left behind are then automatically collected.Not to mention, Cooking Craze also has a 3-tier per level system whereby each new tier represents a higher difficulty level. You are not forced to replay a level just to complete all 3 tiers, unless there's a golden comment card, which is needed to unlock new restaurants, attached to the second or third tier rather than the first, but you'll end up having more coins to spend on food and tool upgrades if you do.
Cooking Craze is indeed a very intriguing time management game (since it's likely the first of its kind) that's just perfect for casual gamers to put in a couple of minutes of play in between the gaps in their schedules and daily routines.
Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands
Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands is a farm simulation/adventure game where you’ll not only need to maintain a farm and make sure that your surviving crew’s needs are being met; you’ll also need to set off on mini-expeditions to explore the many mysterious islands within the archipelago and to discover the secrets they hide. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you might end up finding a way off the island after all!The game is really easy to get into, mainly because the game is driven by its story-based quests so by completing these quests, you be able to unlock new areas and even new tools that will allow you access to different parts of the archipelago. However, you’re given complete freedom to explore any of the islands as you wish, though there are certain parts of the island that would be “roped off” until you’ve progressed far enough into the story and have unlocked the necessary tools.
Everything you do in this game requires energy - and yes, this includes walking – and it’s the main “currency” you’ll need to keep an eye on whenever you head out for a bout of exploring or just a resource-gathering run. Due to this energy system, the gameplay here can be quite strategic, forcing you to decide when you’d want to focus on exploring and when you’d want to spend some of the energy you have to gather some resources like fishing and chopping some trees.
Being a farm simulation game, Stranded Sails also has an allocated area within your base camp for you to grow some crops and feed your crew. You can even try your luck by fishing at the ocean, and then use those raw ingredients to whip up some delicious food to fuel your adventures.
So, overall, Stranded Sails is an oddly strategic farm sim/adventure game mainly because of its energy system, and as a result, the game isn’t as casual as some players would have liked. That said, the game has an interesting storyline going for it, and the gameplay, aside from the energy aspect, isn’t too shabby either. It’s definitely a game that fans of Harvest Moon or other similar games would love to play.