We Hired a Real Chef to Build Our Cooking Game — Here's What Happened

At TATOMAMO, we’re building Food Festival 3 — a cozy, family-friendly mobile game where players cook colorful meals in a playful, ad-free environment.

From the start, we didn’t want to create just another casual cooking game.
We wanted to build a real cooking simulator — something that feels fun, but also grounded in actual food logic.

So we did something unusual for a mobile game studio:
👉 We brought a professional chef into the game design process.

💡 Why a Chef?
We noticed that most mobile food games felt... disconnected from actual food.

• Ingredients don’t behave like they do in real life.

• Everything’s super polished, but not grounded.

• And the gameplay often feels repetitive or frustrating for younger players.

Our chef had worked in high-end restaurants, and instead of just “consulting,” he became part of the design team. Together, we:

• Recreated real food behavior in Unity (from meat texture to sauce physics)

• Based every recipe on real-world logic

• Built stackable systems that mimic actual food prep (what slides, what melts, what holds structure)

• Made sure everything in the game could be cooked at home
  

  What It Changed for the Business

  💡 Better Differentiation
  “The only family cooking game with real recipes” is a strong positioning point in the crowded casual market.

  🧠 Increased Retention Signals
  Playtesters (especially parents) responded positively to the fact that gameplay translated into real-life cooking activities.

  📈 Content Strategy
  We’re planning to release actual recipe cards and simple tutorials, extending the game’s value beyond the screen.

  🎯 Sharable, Organic Hooks
  Players naturally talked about the food, not just the game — which made it easier to seed on social and forums.
  
  🛠️ Still Cooking…

  We’re getting ready for launch, and continuing to improve the feel of food.
  We’re also talking to creators to bring in even more real-world recipes and chef-led ideas.

  There’s a lot of love behind this game — from food, to code, to cozy moments.
  
  -- TATOMAMO