Udupi company’s "MasterChef" game nets $5 million

Udupi company’s "MasterChef" game nets $5 million

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, Dec 24, 2015: ’Star Chef’, a mobile game developed by Udupi-based ’99Games’, is making waves on the iPhone. Revenue from the app has just crossed $5 million on Apple’s App Store, giving an indication of its popularity among people trying to becoming a MasterChef in the virtual world.

Anila Andrade, associate vice president-operations, says: Star Chef is a lovingly crafted cooking and restaurant management game where players progress from chefs to five-star chefs, and expand their restaurant business in the process.

"The game mainly targets women aged 20-55 and those who love cooking-related apps and games.When players begin, they start off as an amateur chef and are given a small restaurant space with one cooking appliance. Customers start dropping in, requesting different items from the menu. While the menu catalogue is limited during the initial phases, newer recipes are unlocked as the game progresses," Anila says.

There are eight to 10 cuisines - American, French, Korean, Italian, et al - and over 100 recipes to unlock as the game evolves. The player can purchase ingredients for the menu from in-game supermarkets. Eventually, the backyard is opened up, where they can farm and produce their own organic veggies.

The game has several fun social features, including an option to trade their produce with other realtime players via a Food Truck. ’Star Chef’ was launched worldwide on the iOS platform in August 2014. The game is free to download and players can spend on the game eventually to buy upgrades like cooking appliances, restaurant decor and other ingredients and goodies.

Star Chef is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese. "The game is showing strong potential when it comes to numbers. Where the most popular cooking TV show, Master Chef has a run time of 40 minutes, Star Chef has an average game time per day of 42 minutes including different sessions," notes Anila.

"While it took us around six months to reach our first $500,000, it took us about nine months to get to $5 million," she notes. The game is growing 20-25% month on month in revenue. 99Games has 16 games in their catalogue so far. Star Chef is their 15th game. She attributes success of Star Chef to a great combination of a good concept that has a universal theme (cooking), art, technology , analytic and well-targeted user acquisition. All these play a very important role in defining a great game with good monetary capabilities, she adds.