Game Concept

Concept statement:

A cooking game combined with running a restaurant, getting orders from customers, cooking with multiple complicated recipes under a time restriction. The game will include recipes ranking from easy to hard based on the playing duration so that players can also learn to cook from the game. In addition, the game will also contain many constraints such as over cooked dishes which might catch fire, or elements in different locations, to replicate the real cooking environments so that players can have the idea for organising ingredients and keep in mind the dangers that might happen in the cooking proccess.

Genre(s):

‘Cooking academy’ is an educational and time-management video game based on a single-player game type. This game focuses on developing sequential and logical thinking skills, as well as memory capacity as players need to plan wisely the procedure to finish the dishes in a limited amount of time to complete the missions in the game. ‘Cooking academy’ game play will focus mostly on delivering a peaceful playing experience in terms of video game graphics as well as music and sound. However, the missions in the game will get from easy to hard, requiring the player to calculate the time, plan the steps to maximise the cooking process to cook as many dishes as possible under a time constraint. In addition, ‘Cooking academy’ will also have other constraints such as ‘overcooked dishes’ which might catch fire in the kitchen that require the player to extinguish the fire before they can use the kitchen again. This can help players, especially young people, to be aware of the dangers that might appear in the cooking process.

Concept creation process:

The idea for the creation of ‘Cooking Academy’ is inspired by the two video games ‘Overcook’  and ‘Overcook 2’ (published by Ghost Town Games Ltd).

‘Overcook’ and ‘Overcook 2’ are chaotic couch co-operating cooking games for one to four players. In the game, players can be the chef in a restaurant in which they need to take responsibility to deliver food based on customers’ orders in a limited amount of time. Players can select the ingredients, chop or cut to make different variations of the ingredient, and then use different ingredients to cook the meal. In the game, players can use the four arrow keys or A, W, D and S keys to move the main character. In the beginning of each level, players will be shown a list of meals with ingredients and steps to complete the meal before they enter the game. When users get into the game, they will need to get familiar with the positions of ingredients, kitchen, and the steps to cook the meals in the beginning of the level to optimise the cooking process. Players will get the order from a “waiter” for the dishes that they need to cook and then deliver it in a limited amount of time. If players fail to deliver the dish on time, they will not get points for that dish. Players can finish a level with a minimum number of points. However, to get through the next level, they need to have a sufficient amount of points for the selected level. The higher the game level, the higher points that level required. Players can come back to their previous level to get higher scores if their scores are not sufficient for them to move forward.

‘Cooking academy’ will inherit almost all features described above. However, the number of players will be restricted to only one player and the cooking process of each meal and ingredients will be limited to some easy homecook recipes so that young players can also learn cooking skills from the game as well. In addition, the cooking process such as chopping and frying will also be removed and players only need to select the ingredients in the right order as in the recipes to make the dish. The cooking constraints such as kitchen fire will remain and appear randomly to raise warning for players to understand the danger in the  real cooking process.

Audiences and competitive analysis:

‘Cooking academy’ aims to be an enjoyable game to people at a wide range of ages and cooking skill levels. However, the potential players group for the game would be young children from thirteen to eighteen, or adults who are finding a relaxing play-style game to relax after hours at work. This game is also suitable for people who enjoy cooking and want to have some experiences being a chef in the kitchen of a restaurant. However, this game does not require much skills for cooking, however, to pass all the levels, players might need memory skills, logical thinking skills and time management skills.

Unlike other games within the same genre, ‘Cooking academy’ will make the game play more playable for young children and make it more suitable for one player play-style. Inheriting the idea from ‘Overcook’ and ‘Overcook 2’, however, ‘Cooking academy’ will remove features such as cooking time, cutting and chopping ingredients, to make the game less stressful and more enjoyable to serve the target players who are kids or people who only want a relaxing game after work. However, in each level of the game, players can only see the recipes once at the beginning and they need to remember all the ingredients in order to make the dish, and the waiting time for each dish will also be reduced to add a little ‘stress’ for players to use their time management skills.

In addition, ‘Cooking academy’ will also be different from other cooking games with different genres as well. Most other games such as ‘Dinner Dash’ will also focus on the serving part of the restaurant which will require players to place customers at the correct table and deliver the right dish to the right table. However, in ‘Cooking academy’, the game is built to focus mostly on the experience of becoming a chef in a real-life restaurant. Therefore, it will only focus into the cooking functionalities and making the dish on time to maximise the experience of players of being a chef only.

Game treatment and concept art:

Background story:

Frank is a boy living in a small town in Italy. Frank’s mother is a talented homecook with a dream to build a small restaurant in her hometown to serve people her best dishes. However, due to financial situation, she cannot achieve her dream. Frank's childhood is filled with the image of his mom’s kitchen and he is also influenced by his mother’s passion. When grown up, Frank studied food science at the university and then worked for a famous can food company in Paris, France, one of the capitals of food in the world. However, after his mother passed away, Frank decided to quit his job and spend all of his money to build a restaurant in Paris to honour his mother and fulfil her ongoing dream.

The gameplay is about three different important places during Frank's life. In the first few levels, the player will be Frank’s mother cooking in her home kitchen to feed her family and friends. In this stage of the game, players will get used to easy recipes and not get too depressed with time to make a dish. In the next level, the player will become Frank when he starts opening his first restaurant. In this stage, players will be introduced with some more advanced recipes and also get more time constraints to replicate the real-life restaurant kitchen atmosphere. For the last stage, players will be Frank when he got the successful restaurant and now he needs to gain more reputation. In this stage, players will be introduced with all recipes from easy to hard and they need to cook under greater time pressure as well.

Game features:

• Recipes:

Recipes will be displayed in the description of each level as well as at the beginning of each level before the player clicks ‘start’. These recipes will include the ingredient and steps for selecting each ingredient to make a meal. Players will need to remember all of the recipes for a level and they cannot have access to the recipe again throughout the playing process. However, if players get the wrong combinations of ingredients and make the wrong dish, they can dispose of it in the bin and start again. If Frank delivers the wrong order, he will get their customers' happiness decreases and Frank will not get any points for that dish.

• Challenges:

The difficulty of the game will increase after each level. The game has ten levels in total. After a stage (a level), the number of orders within a fixed time will increase. In other words, players will get more stressed in time. Otherwise, for each level, there will be more complex dishes being introduced so that players need to remember more recipes as well. For example, at the first level, Frank’s mother must serve ten orders with 3 dishes within three minutes as a homecook. At the second level, there will be more than fifteen orders with 5 dishes in three minutes. Therefore, players must work faster and remember more recipes to pass. The level of difficulty will be reset after every three levels. At the final stage (level 10), you must serve 50 orders within 4 to 5 minutes with around 10 dishes.

• Goals:

To pass a level, you only need to earn enough points to achieve one star. However, there is no limit for the maximum score. However, every level requires a minimum number of scores to play so that player might need to come back to some level to improve the score if they want to move forward in the game.

• Points:

For each successful dish being delivered, Frank will get points based on the satisfaction of the customer (based on how fast the player provides the dish). However, if Frank gets the wrong order or cannot deliver the dish on time, the player will not get any points from the dish but they still need to provide the dish to receive the next order.

• Skill upgrading:

The game includes ten levels in total. Along with passing every three levels, there are also some requirements that you must meet to upgrade skills for Frank. More specifically, Frank can move faster and the time to distinguish the fire will be less if players get more points. In a level, this can also be achieved if Frank gets a combo of satisfied orders. However, in a level, Frank speed will be reseted if he cannot continue the satisfied orders chain with one unsatisfied order and the combo will be reset from the start.

Concept art:

The target concept art of ‘Cooking academy’ will be a vivid 2D pixel style with colours and images which is suitable for young players. The art will be inherits from the game arts listed below:

Kitchen 2D assets

Food 2D Assets

Chef 2D Assets

Reference

https://store.steampowered.com/app/728880/Overcooked_2/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/448510/Overcooked/

https://rkuhlf-assets.itch.io/restaurant-pixel-art

https://reakain.itch.io/kitchen-assets

https://lazy-fox.itch.io/pixel-food