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.

PromptCreate 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 typeDesign documentPlayer count1Rules

(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