More Than Just Cooking

Ingredient quality is (almost) everything

One feature I recently realized was missing, after playing for a while, was the ability to have ingredient quality right there “in sight.” Let me explain.

There is currently a system that calculates the average quality of a batch of ingredients—for example, bananas. If you have enough good-quality bananas, the final quality of the dishes you prepare will benefit from it and, as a result, customer satisfaction will probably increase. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. I suspect nobody runs a yatai to become a millionaire, but rather to make people happy by serving good food. Or maybe some people simply do it because they have to.

Either way, the game didn’t provide an easy way to see the quality of each batch of ingredients. The only place where I could see the current quality was in the Stock screen, inside the details for each ingredient.

Considering this is one of the game’s essential variables, I implemented quality information across all markets and on the Stock screen. Now it’s much easier to know the quality of each batch of ingredients, which markets offer the best quality, and even how much the average quality would improve if you bought a particular batch.

More than just cooking

From the beginning, the game was never meant to be just about cooking. I want it to create an atmosphere that I can only imagine, but that I’m sure is there. Sharing a rustic place to eat with other people—a cozy one, at least for some—with everything that comes with it. It’s an interesting place to meet people, learn about their habits, stories, and personalities, and make the work a little more bearable along the way.

These stories don’t directly affect the game’s progression (or do they?), but they reward players who take the time to talk to their customers. If the conversation goes down the right path, we might be rewarded not only with a good chat, but also with a memory that becomes part of our own story.

The mechanics

I’ll admit it: this is the part I struggle with the most.

Since we were talking about quality, one of the variables considered when determining food quality—measured from 0 to 5, with 5 being excellent—is whether the player actually dragged the ingredients onto the plate. Effort should be rewarded. On the other hand, if the player only uses the Fast Cooking bonus, the dish is prepared without any effort, but its quality definitely won’t be the best. There’s no love in pressing a button and calling it cooking!

Still, handling and cooking ingredients can get a little tiring if dragging is the only way to do it. With that in mind, I added a menu that appears when you right-click an ingredient in the inventory. From there, the player simply selects the type of preparation they want to perform.

I’m still not 100% convinced this is the best solution. At the end of the day, this is the most important mechanic in the game. However, after weighing the options I had, I think it’s the most suitable approach for now.

When will the game be ready?

That’s a question many people—and I myself—have been asking for almost two and a half years. One month? Six months? A year? I don’t know.

I think I underestimated how much effort it takes to make a game. Or at least, how much effort it takes me to make one.

There are still several key aspects left to work on. I need to make sure all the dialogue flows and other elements that make up the game’s story are working properly. I also need people outside the project to play it and help me figure out whether the game is properly balanced.

And then there’s the whole promotion side of things which, to be fair, is what worries me the most. I have no idea how to approach promotion—or at least, how to approach it properly.

I’ve pretty much neglected the Steam page. Many people recommend having the page ready at least six months before releasing the game, so you can start building up wishlists. Others suggest having some kind of channel where potential players who are interested in trying the game can gather. A Discord server, maybe? I don’t know, but I need to figure it out soon.

As always, thank you so much for making it this far.

P.S. Oh, I almost forgot: a whole bunch of bugs were fixed. And when I say a whole bunch, I mean more than 100—143, to be exact. And who knows how many are still hiding somewhere in there.