Picture this:

• Traveling the world (Trindad. New York. Istanbul. Hong Kong.)
• Making chocolates (Mint chocolate bars.  Hazelnut vanilla chocolate squares.  Mahajanga cherry chocolate infusions.  Coffee Cinnamon Truffles.)
• Purchasing ingredients at local markets  (Macadamia nuts.  Caramel.  Raspberries.)
• Completing quests (Finding recipes.  Delivering chocolates.  Manufacturing new products.)

…All from the comfort of your chair (or couch/desk/bed or wherever you park your computer/laptop/device).

Sound like fun?  It is!  Allow me to show you a brief glimpse of the Chocolatier Game:

Note:  I discovered this game in my 20s, and have only tried out the Story Mode.

The story starts in San Francisco, where, in the Cliff Chalet, Evangeline Baumeister briefly recounts her chocolate-related past.   You’re immediately recruited to help, in hopes of reuniting the Baumeister family and uncovering their long-lost recipes for a huge selection of mouth-watering chocolates.

Evangeline is kind enough to gift you with enough cacao beans to make your first chocolates.   After stopping at the market for sugar, your next stop is the San Francisco chocolate factory.

See the cannon?   Click, and the ingredients shoot out wherever the cannon is positioned.  Every time a tray is filled with the correct ingredients, it is moved off the production line and counts as one case of chocolates.  The faster you are, the more chocolates the factory will produce per week.  If you’re not a very good aim and miss, production slows down.  Don’t bother to try get away with filling the trays with too much of any one ingredient; the factory boss makes sure to tell you exactly which ingredients need to be used… and exactly how many you’ve wasted.

With a bit more advice from Evangeline, you’re off on your first supply trip south, starting a whirlwind of traveling to new places, purchasing ingredients for chocolate orders, manufacturing new chocolates, making sure everything is in stock, visiting stores to sell your wares…..

Be sure to check in with everyone you meet along the way; they will either have a word of advice, a new recipe to make (Trinidadian Cacao Almond Vanilla truffles, anyone?), or a bit of news:

I think part of the fun is discovering how to play the Chocolatier Game by yourself (and learning from your mistakes). Here are a few more glimpses into the game:

• In each location, you will generally find, at the very least:  A market, a shop to sell finished chocolates, and a place to meet up with the person you are supposed to talk to (or bring chocolates to).
• The more quests you complete, the more locations open up (with new ingredients).   Six locations include factories; the San Francisco factory is yours to use from the beginning and the others are available for purchase.    Many locations (Trinidad, Sulawesi, etc) also offer their own specialty cacao, which are needed to complete certain recipes.
• You will quickly learn where to go to buy certain ingredients, and which markets offer the cheapest prices.  (If you’re the adventurous type, you can even try haggling!) While milk and sugar are available almost everywhere, there are other ingredients that can only be found in a single location.   If you’re out of vanilla, your only option is to scurry back to Madagascar.  Raspberries?  Hong Kong.   Coffee?  Run to Rio.
• It’s rather tricky to make sure there is enough stock of each ingredient, as the factories are producing more while you’re away.  If the factory in New York is producing Colombo Cacao Caramel Truffles and you’ve run out of Colombo Cacao (available only in Colombo, naturally), or caramel, or sugar, or truffle powder, then factory production is stalled.   On the other hand, new quests involve constantly switching production over to new recipes, and you don’t want hundreds of pounds of caramel going bad on you because you switched to Blended Cacao Raspberry Coconut truffles and are no longer using any caramel…
• Thankfully, to help you keep it all straight, the game includes a:

Recipe Book (So you know which recipes you have, and which ingredients you need to make them)
Factory Status Window (Telling you which factories you own, which chocolate each factory is making, if production is stalled, and why)
Ingredient List (So you know what you’ve purchased, and how much is left)
Status Report Summary (Current quest / Recent Travels / Recent Purchases / etc)

I think that should get you started.  Last but not least, a few tips:

• Try to memorize the names of the characters that live in each location.  Later on in the Chocolatier Game, you may be asked to deliver chocolates to them, without being reminded of where they live.  Knowing exactly where to go will avoid wasting time traveling from place to place until you stumble across them again.
• When your machines are outfitted for truffles and truffle production has started, keep a HUGE stock of truffle powder (buy extra, whenever it is a good price).  Truffle powder mysteriously disappears at one point in the game, and production will be stalled unless you’ve stocked up…

Have fun!