Magical Restaurant (2013)

Magical Restaurant is a quick-playing game in which players are small restaurant owners, trying to cater to the varying tastes of idols from the nearby production office and capture their hearts. There are some eccentrics among the customers, so players have to carefully balance upgrading their restaurant furniture and food skills with feeding the passing customers.

The goal of the game is to collect the most love points by the end of the game. In order to gain love points you will need to have your customers eat as much of your food as possible. And to do that you need to improve your food preparation skills and get good furniture for your restaurant.

Players start the game with one food stand (which lets you prepare one food card) and five food cards. Five food cards are placed face-up in a row in the middle of the table, and six character cards are also placed face-up.

As the first action in the game, each player chooses two of their food cards in secret. These are then revealed to show which food preparation skills they start with.

Taking turns round the table. players may take two actions of the four available. They may take the same action twice. The options are:

• Take a food card - take one of five face-up food cards on the table, or the face-down card from the top of the deck.
• Prepare food - Take one food card from your hand and place it on an empty food stand. You must have the skill required to play the food card.
• Buy furniture - discard any two food cards to buy the furniture you want. This could be more food stands, or wallpaper/floor tiles that may give you bonus points at the end of the game.
• Raise your skill level - Play a food card in front of you to raise your skill level.

When you prepare food, you need to check whether the hunger level of any of the face-up character cards has been satisfied by the food you have prepared. If it has, you take the character card and place it face-down in front of you. This is where most of your love points will come from.

At the end of your turn, replace any food or character cards that were taken from the table, shuffling the food discard pile if necessary. If you now hold more than three food cards, discard down to three.

The game ends when the deck of food cards has been depleted twice in a 3-player game or three times in a 4-player game. Play continues until each player has had the same number of turns. Love points are awarded for the character cards you have collected, from drink cards that you may have played during food preparation, and bonuses from the wallpaper/floor tile furniture cards. The player with the most points wins.