The Kitchen

Welcome to The Kitchen! Inspired by the likes of Amazon Go, Blue Apron, and Door Dash / Grub Hub -- and subsequently running out of time for development as with most over-scoped game jam entries!

How it relates to the #GMTK2017 theme: cut elements aside (as Downwell-ian game dynamics are a devilish jam theme to test!), what remains are mostly smaller advances under the theme's vision (often actually not dealing with dynamics at all, but a much more atomic sense of the "serve 2+ functions" motif), including...

• The food also being characterized, rather than just plain ol' Cooking Mama ingredients
• The need to finish making meals by hitting the Cook button and bringing up the results overlay, but this also blocks the ability to listen to the food's (unfortunately identical! what a bunch of robots) messages
• The music serves as normal music, but also indicates the increased difficulty (i.e. hunger decay rate) as you cook more meals
• Intro text sets the narrative premise, but for those who'd remember it establishes what the initial amount of money you have to spend is
• The meal metrics on the results screen interdepend on one another, with the boost to Hunger implying a boost to the meal price. However, this is as far as this got in implementation (the Skill was to come from the use of currently incomplete flavorings, acting as a discount and even money-gaining method if abused cleverly).

Third-party resources in use:

• Unreal Engine 4
• Lots of UE4's starter/engine content for the 3D primitives, intro sky, font and UI animations, as well as the SFX (the new VR editor's got several great click sounds)
• Music: http://timotheyadam.com/AUD/

Basically, outside of the quick sprites, I was just focused on the design/code. I definitely learned a ton with this though, both as to where my personal tastes have developed since my last Ludum Dares back years ago (You Are the Villain and You Only Get One, I believe).

Thanks for hosting/judging this jam!