Back in July, we wrote about Japan’s Colopl and its geolocation conquest game Keitai Kunitori Gassen. And now just recently, Colopl has announced the release of Enish’s Boku-no-restaurant II (meaning ‘My restaurant’ in Japanese) on its platform.

Boku-no-restaurant is a simulation geo-location game where users open up a restaurant and aspire to make it into a first-class establishment. You can cook a variety of (virtual) food, such as Japanese, French, or Chinese cuisine, or even sweets. The game works just as if you were opening a restaurant in real life. It’s about creating unique menus, promoting the restaurant, and working to increase sales. There are mini games that allows users to enhance their experience points to make their restaurants more popular.

Because there are tips in the game that let users learn about food and restaurants (such as the origin of a certain menu item or details about the ingredients) the game can be pretty educational. There are collaborative features too, where people can help each to cook better food, or chat on bulletin boards to share tips.

Initially released back in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo employees, the game is available on all possible platforms including Gree and Mobage, but it was first made available on Mixi. The game acquired over 500,000 users in the two weeks after its release.

The geolocation aspect of the game is called ‘Osanpo Gacha,’ where ‘Osanpo’ means to take a walk in Japanese. By actually traveling some distance and checking in to a new location, users can get special items. In the past, there were O2O campaigns at stores like Gyukaku (a Korean barbecue chain) or Lawson (a major convenience store), by ordering a specific food, users got special cards with a code that let them download special game items.

Boku-no-restaurant can be played on iPhone, Android, as well as feature phones. These geolocation games are a fun way for people to enjoy their everyday life a little more, especially if they have to commuting from their home to the office.