Cooking Game
Design journey and breakdown.
Introduction
This game is still in development, and likely will be for the next year or so. Sachit asked Willow and I to collaborate on this project after we had worked with him on Tumblestone Fury, and we gladly accepted. This project had lots of design elements that I really wanted to further explore, such as writing the narrative and creating animated cutscenes. These were skills that I had a lot of interest in developing, and this was a great opportunity to do so.
The project is a cooking game, similar to the likes of Overcooked, but the player can choose multiple roles to play. These are: cook, bartender, waiter, and manager. We had many meetings and discussions with Sachit, in which we helped to finalise the gameplay loops and the structure of the levels. We ultimately decided on levels for each day of the week, with a ‘review’ happening every Friday. We also decided at this point that there would be several different types of restaurants that the player could choose to start in. These were: takeout (chef role), fast food (chef role, but faster paced), pub (bartender and chef), café bar (bartender and waiter). No matter the starting point, the player would eventually level up their establishment to have all four roles open. The ‘manager’ role would unlock once the player had reached a certain level of mastery in the other roles.
With this all established, we began to develop the ideas further.
Time Management
The game is set to have a demo released by the end of this year, and to be finished and launched on Steam by the end of next year. The project is mostly casual, with each team member working on it when they have time. We also have regular in-person discussions concerning progress on the project.
Other than the estimated release dates, there is not a strict time frame that tasks must be completed within. Because of this, I haven’t created a Gannt chart for this project, and rather I complete tasks whenever possible, or whenever Sachit asks me to. I do keep track of which tasks need to be completed using a weekly checklist, which is a method I use for most projects that I work on.
Competitors
Seeing as this game is going to be published on Steam, it is important to consider competitors in our genre. I researched similar low-poly cooking games to learn from their gameplay and styles.
According to the Steam page, Overcooked 2 is a chaotic cooking game with local or online co-op for up to four players (Steam, 2018). The player response is very favourable, with 90% of the 43,851 reviews being positive (Steam, 2018). So I decided to look at what makes Overcooked 2 so successful, and which of these elements could be applied to our game to ensure a positive response.
Characters
Overcooked 2 allows players to customise their character, by choosing out of many preset appearances. Some are human, and some are different animals. The characters have a low poly art style, but still appear smooth and stylised, matching the style of the rest of the game. A noticeable feature of each character is that they are missing arms, but have floating hands by their sides. This works well with the stylisation of the game but is likely a functionality decision for when the characters pick up objects.
These are all interesting observations, which I will consider during my own design process.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Overcooked 2 is very chaotic, with much of the appeal focused on the multiplayer elements. Our game will not be multiplayer, but it is still useful to analyse the gameplay in case any of it could be utlised in a single player experience.
The base mechanics of cutting / preparation, cooking, and serving are found in most cooking games and will likely be applied to ours as well. The automation of some features, such as the cooking, helps to balance gameplay and gives the player time to start preparing other dishes or elements.
Overcooked 2 often includes stages that separate players from one another, meaning they have to rely on communication to get the meals made. Already considering the time limit and multitasking elements, this can easily overwhelm the players unless they are all working together. The recipes also get more complicated as the game goes on, meaning players will have to cooperate and work on new dishes that they may find challenging. Some stages also include treadmills on the floor, and obstacles that move, which I feel works better for the multiplayer gameplay, but may become frustrating in a single player game.
The increasing difficulty of the recipes is an element that could be implemented into our game effectively, as there will be opportunities to upgrade your restaurant. This may introduce new combinations of ingredients as the player progresses to higher levels.
The Papa Louie games are a staple of the cooking genre. Papa’s Freezeria currently sits at ‘overwhelmingly positive’ on Steam, with 99% positive reviews from 7,423 users (Steam, 2023). Many of the games also have mobile versions, and the series is very popular. It is a great example to analyse to make sure that our game contains all of the classic elements that make these cooking games so beloved.
Characters
The Papa’s games are in a stylised 2D style, and always follow human protagonists, usually one male, one female.
This aligns with sustainable development goal 10, which strives to ‘reduce inequality’, with a key area of focus being on women being discriminated against (United Nations, 2023). Gaming communities are male dominated ‘over half (52%) of women in gaming admit to feeling worried about abuse when playing video games online’ (Sky, 2023). Games that include playable female characters, even if its optional like in the Papa Louie games, are striving to breach that gap in the community, and are encouraging a more welcoming space for all.
The mobile ports actually improved on this feature even further, allowing players to fully customise their characters. Previously, both selectable characters (Cooper and Prudence) were Caucasian, and now there are additional customisation options and skin tone variations. This helps to combat the exclusion of people of colour, including African Americans who, according to Dornieden, only make up 2% of game development industry (Dornieden, 2020).
We eventually decided to have character selection in our game, so we would try to use these ideas where applicable.
Other than the representation, the characters are very stylised with large head, hands and feet, and very skinny arms and necks.
Gameplay
Papa Louie games also rely on time management skills, but in a slightly less chaotic way. There is no time limit, rather a set number of orders to complete. The player will be rewarded based on the accuracy of the meal as well as how fast they made it, with customers leaving higher tips for a better score.
This is definitely more along the lines of our project, as the tips mechanic seems similar to our weekly reviews.
Character Design
Back to our project.
After discussing with Sachit and showing him our prior work, Willow and I decided on a pixel art style, with 2D characters in an isometric 3D low poly environment. Sachit implemented some placeholder sprites for the player, of a little dinosaur character.
We all agreed that it looked really good and decided to make our characters animals as well. We also researched the size of the placeholder sprites, which were created at 24 x 24, so that we could match the scale of the placeholder character.
Design Process
We brainstormed ideas for animals that would be visually different from one another, and then divided the work. The two characters I designed were the bear and the alligator.
I made some sketches, attempting to stay within a style that could be translated well into pixel art. I tried a few colour variations for each character, until I ended up with these.
Final Designs
Pixel Art
I then recreated these designs as pixel art and was pleasantly surprised by how well they fit the small dimensions. I mostly have experience working with sprites sized 128 x 128 pixels, so this was a new design process for me.
Considering Goal 10
Although the characters were all animals, I still wanted to include some elements of diversity in line with my research of Goal 10. I chose to present the alligator as female, by adding a few extra pixels to indicate eyelashes. This is often used on small-scale pixel art to make characters look more feminine, and I feel that it worked effectively for this character. An animal like an alligator may usually be presented as male due to its power and aggression, so making it female felt like a subversion of any stereotypes.
Animation
The first character I animated was the alligator. Using what I had learned earlier in Room 101, I tried to show some personality in the animations. The alligator has a large, spiky smile, so I made her idle animation very bouncy, moving her body and tail slightly out of sync for a more natural look. I animated a front and back sprite, as they were both needed for engine implementation.
Next was the walk. Due to the size of the sprite, it was much harder to show personality in this animation. I mostly referenced Willow’s dog walking animation, to make sure they matched, and added a few pixels of extra width to the tail in certain frames, to make it more dynamic.
The process was similar for the polar bear, for which I created these idle animations.
Feedback
I was given some very valuable feedback on these animations and made some changes. Sachit suggested making the polar bear exhale a visual breath, to indicate the cold but also to show his larger form and how he’s likely a heavy breather. To make this look better, I changed the angle of his head to appear more side-on. The breathing went through two iterations, with the first being slightly too bland.
Old
New
Old
New
Breath Old
Breath new
With this finished, I created the walks in the same style.
Narrative
As of our most recent meeting with Sachit, we’ve began to develop the narrative of the game.
The playable character joins a restaurant owned by a grumpy boss, but a lot of the staff are quitting because it’s clearly in the process of ‘going under’. This means the player is transferred across multiple different stations in their first week, until the restaurant eventually fails the weekly inspection and is closed down.
Plucky as ever, the player character is the only one to remain at the boss’ side, and they get to help choose the next restaurant to open up. This first week acts as a tutorial and allows the player to become familiar with each ‘role’ before choosing the next restaurant.
The default player is the dog, and the boss is a much older dog, who seems to see a bit of themselves in the young pup. The boss is very angry and grizzled, but this never deters the player character’s care and spark.
Conclusion
I will continue to work on this project over the next year. So far, I feel that the project is one of my favourites yet, and has the potential to become a popular, published game.
Reference List
Dornieden, N. (2020). Leveling Up Representation: Depictions of People of Color in Video Games | PBS. [online] Independent Lens. Available at: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/leveling-up-representation-depictions-of-people-of-color-in-video-games/ [Accessed 25 Apr. 2024].
Sky (2023). Unfair Game: Millions of women in gaming suffer online harassment and abuse. [online] www.skygroup.sky. Available at: https://www.skygroup.sky/article/unfair-game-millions-of-women-in-gaming-suffer-online-harassment-and-abuse [Accessed 25 Apr. 2024].
Steam (2023). Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe on Steam. [online] store.steampowered.com. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2291760/Papas_Freezeria_Deluxe/?curator_clanid=44085224 [Accessed 25 Apr. 2024].
Steam (2018). Save 75% on Overcooked! 2 on Steam. [online] store.steampowered.com. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/728880/Overcooked_2/ [Accessed 25 Apr. 2024].
United Nations (2023). Goal 10 | Reduce Inequality within and among Countries. [online] sdgs.un.org. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal10 [Accessed 25 Apr. 2024].