Developing Cooking Pals proved to be much more difficult of a challenge than I initially anticipated, especially when it came to designing and modeling the underlying system. I realized through its development I wasn’t fully sure exactly what a system was, or how to represent it accurately through in-game resources and dynamics. In fact, our very first idea (a game modeling Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) was dismissed due to feedback that it wasn’t much of a system at all. I think this is something we struggled with throughout each iteration of the game, though I felt we learned a good deal in the process.
The narrative of the game, interestingly, ended up playing a larger role in the experience than originally expected. We began brainstorming together with an idea for a vibe, but over time (and with the hard work of our narrative builder, Ellie), the full picture began to take shape. It was really fascinating to see players engage with the narrative in this way, especially as it related to the choice of choosing chefs. It was also interesting to hear players’ responses to ethical dilemmas posed to them during the game, such as whether to allow a chef to be eaten or not. These were elements I wish we had the chance to explore more, but we were limited by time constraints in our implementation.
While the final result wasn’t as polished or successful as I had hoped, in part due to our platform pivot about midway through development, it was an incredibly valuable learning experience. It would have been nice to have seen the full vision in Unity as originally intended, but moving forward this will be invaluable in helping me scope projects realistically and recognize systems in the real world and translate them effectively into games.
