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Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

Nice Games Jam: "The Intergalactic Dining Consortium"

Apr 23, 2025
00:00

Your nice hosts settle their differences in opinions when it comes to food to serve up a fresh game design document in a new Nice Games Jam episode.

Prompt
Create a game with one of my favorite things, food! It cannot be about/or have mechanics that are cooking. Think: growing food, pairing foods, making an international food court, menu design, using foods in season, etc.
Game type
Design document
Player count
1
Rules

(Stephen note: This is more of a set of notes taken during the episode outlining a game design document.)

  • Human in an alien culture, giving recommendations for pairings for food
  • You should need to learn the rules before you can break them
    • Gain credibility
  • People order categories of food and you put it on the plate (no cooking)
  • Gamer Journey
    • You’re a plater at an alien restaurant
    • You first do it like a human (based on taste)
    • You get feedback that opposes basing plates on taste
    • Player starts to get curious about how to make better plates to meet needs
  • Sense criteria
    • Touch
    • Sight
    • Temperature
    • Spiciness
  • Taste the “wine” to know what it “tastes” like
  • The threat is if you do poorly you get shipped to another planet, they have different foods and different desires for foods
  • Options to change
    • Two ingredients (tomato and other tomato? Looks similar)
    • Position of foods
    • Container of foods
    • Orientation of foods
    • Aesthetic of the restaurant?
  • You design the special
    • Create one dish for the special, you get an amount of feedback based on the size of the restaurant
    • You can tweak your dish based on the feedback you get
    • Things change as you go through the game and impact what you have available and what patrons like
    • The goal is for players to experiment with the different foods (positions, containers, etc.) so they begin to understand the rules of the game
    • There can be clues with the background/worldbuilding so players can learn why the foods these aliens like are why they like them
  • When do you get to influence cultures? Do you get to at all?
    • Yes, you need to figure out a way to get aliens to love the food and not just like it

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