The Sparrow Served Danger by incobalt

made by incobalt for LD 41 (COMPO)

https://youtu.be/m6Sod8cqRuc
Sparrow Endive went deep undercover into the world of underground cooking and has gained much popularity in a short amount of time. The reality show High-Stakes Chef has invited Sparrow to compete for the title of master in their prestigious arena. The event has called out rarely seen judges, and one of them is a counter operative. Guide Sparrow through the event, win, and identify the spy. Losing isn't an option. In this competition, you lose, you die.

Controls

Movement: WASD or arrow keys
Look: Mouse
Interact: Left mouse button
Some screens prompt you to press arrow keys. Escape will quit out of the game at any time.

Playing the game

This game takes a little over 12 minutes to play.
Your job is to make four dishes to the satisfaction of the judges. Start at the four staging areas to decide on a style for each dish. Then, follow the list of tasks. You'll need to pick up your dish and station it stations where you need to work on it or pick up ingredients. Gathering ingredients is the same as cooking, the number of ingredients is how many keys you need to hit at the correct station. Make sure you stage each dish and check off a task before you go on to the next task! Some tasks require you to stay at a station when it's cooking, and others you need to leave behind. Pay close attention to the tasks!
After 2 hours (12 minutes of actual play), the competition is over and your dishes will be judged. If your food isn't made well enough, then your life is over! If you win the competition, you get one chance to grab the counter operative during the closing ceremony. Get the right one, or your cover will be blown! Note: A minute on the clock is only 6 seconds of play! I did this so you didn't have to play for two literal hours :)

Notes

I honestly do not know if it's possible to make the dishes in the alotted time. I was unable to get around to doing a full test of the game. If you manage it, let me know!
The Web version requires WebGL 2.0, but seems to run pretty well. This means that you need a modern Firefox or Chrome version to run it (sorry). You can check here to see if your browser supports WebGL 2.0. No Mac version this time. At one point I was going to use a library that required the 4.x runtime, but it's not in the game anymore. Sadly, trying to step back down from 4.x crashes the project, so I am leaving it alone. The 4.x runtime means I can't write to Mac, aparently Please let me know if there are problems with audio at all. There is audio, so if you can't hear any after the cooking starts then let me know. I've had issues with audio disappearing in past compos.
Sorry about the box graphics, I just didn't have time to make proper stations. Over time, the look really grew on me, though.

Screenshots

Windows	http://incobalt.me/Games/Sparrow/Sparrow_X64.zip
Windows	http://incobalt.me/Games/Sparrow/Sparrow_X86.zip
HTML5 (web)	http://incobalt.me/Games/Sparrow/
Source	http://incobalt.me/Games/Sparrow/Sparrow_Source.zip
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/the-sparrow-served-danger

Ratings

Overall	695^th	2.328⭐	31🧑‍⚖️
Fun	694^th	2.071⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	674^th	2.423⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Theme	652^th	2.667⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	683^th	1.929⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Audio	436^th	2.536⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Humor	391^th	2.48⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Mood	578^th	2.519⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Given		31🗳️	28🗨️

Feedback

pandademic42

23. Apr 2018 · 03:28 UTC

Whenever I left click, I don't have any ingredients or instructions to cook with. I went over to the special ingredients, the fridge, and the table, but it said the same thing. Where can I pick up ingredients?

🎤 incobalt

23. Apr 2018 · 04:01 UTC

@pandademic42 You need a dish stationed where you're selecting ingredients. I'll add that to the description. I know my game doesn't explain itself well, sorry about that!

Memedev0

23. Apr 2018 · 21:46 UTC

Pretty good, but I was unable to grasp the mechanics well.

wsKilljoy

23. Apr 2018 · 21:55 UTC

Pretty fun! Good job.

🎤 incobalt

23. Apr 2018 · 21:56 UTC

@Memedev0 Yeah, this was a case of "I'll balance these mechanics later!" and then never getting to it :P

fashionbatman

23. Apr 2018 · 22:02 UTC

I sort of just clicked around not sure of what I was doing. I feel like there is a cool game here, it just needed some more time.

🎤 incobalt

23. Apr 2018 · 22:07 UTC

@fashionbatman Yeah, I way over-scoped for this one =/

John Darrington

23. Apr 2018 · 22:13 UTC

I'm not sure what this did to incorporate the theme - but this time around was super tough. It was dark and spooky (due to your unfinished graphics) but it worked well with that music. 48 hours isn't a lot of time, I'm sure you felt like you had a timer that a minute == six seconds in real time :D

🎤 incobalt

23. Apr 2018 · 22:16 UTC

@John-Darrington There was one point I became aware of the fact that I was making people play with a tough time-management mechanic right after they made a game in tough time-management situation.

jshaffer94247

24. Apr 2018 · 04:20 UTC

The special ingredient seems to be a new variety of unobtanium. I enjoyed the spooky music and minimalist graphics. I poached something and put it everywhere, but then took it with me. I might still be walking around with it for all I know. It's kind of hard to see in this dark kitchen. Who did your decorating? Okay, so it's not finished (and neither is mine), but I see where you're going and I liked it. Hope you had fun working on it.

TheGreenMan

24. Apr 2018 · 21:04 UTC

I really like the idea, and the way you split the different tasks into stations is fun. Only problem, when you play, you have no feedback. It doesn't do anything when you press the keys, so there's no way to know if you're doing the right thing... A sound or a color change would've done the trick. Also, this is not a problem, I'm just wondering, is it normal that the keys at the stations appear so slowly ?

🎤 incobalt

24. Apr 2018 · 22:02 UTC

@TheGreenMan Trust me, I wanted to put more feedback into the game, but I just ran out of time at the end. I was already dreaming up sounds for each of the stations. It's a wonder I managed to even get music for the game this time.

24. Apr 2018 · 23:37 UTC

i don't get it there are little to no directions and its get all more confusing when no art is placed just clicking around would be a waste to so i feel it just needs more time to develop truly

fazz

25. Apr 2018 · 16:49 UTC

This was well written, but it feels like you had a grand game planned and not enough time to execute. I am king of scope creep so I totally understand, but for LD the mantra really is "simplify simplify simplify". I would like to see more, especially of the writing.

🎤 incobalt

25. Apr 2018 · 21:47 UTC

@fazz This was definitely a case of me getting an idea in my head early on and just not being able to think of anything else after it. The weird thing was that this time around I wanted to make a game that wasn't all narrative and was based on the gameplay for once, and I ended up mostly doing narrative stuff anyway >.> Then again, I *did* decide to mash up thematic genres so I guess narrative was going to be there anyway.

Hilvon

25. Apr 2018 · 22:36 UTC

This game is really... confusing. Like I am supposed to prepare 4 dishes, but I see 6 options...

Literaly couldn't figure out what to do. Like I managet to pick up a dish. Then bring it to special ingridients table to pick up 4 items... and nothing. Placing the dish into the table or removing it appear to have changed nothing.

Also I guess this is kind of too much to ask from a game made in 48 hours, but if there is an aopponent on the other side of the kitchen, it might have at least moved between the stations a bit. Just to pretend it is also doing something.

The music is fitting to the spy hun theme... ans as such misses the kitchen topic altogether...

Still with better UI telegraphing the game might be interesting.

🎤 incobalt

25. Apr 2018 · 22:51 UTC

@Hilvon There's very little feedback and the whole mechanic is silly and doesn't fit anyway. This game has a clucky self-check system where I had the player check off tasks as they happened, but a better backend that automatically checked off things should have been in place. I wanted to simulate an uncertainty of cooking under a time crunch, but it just made for bad gameplay and there wasn't enough time to put a proper system in place at the end. The music is a bit inspired by Iron Chef America which has this tense strings feel, but I made the music in about an hour so I didn't capture it as well as I'd have liked. Oh well. At least I managed to get the spy feel down for it. Also, there were plans to make the opponent move around that kept getting pushed back for time, so I'm with you there!

ThePelranthean

26. Apr 2018 · 01:09 UTC

As everyone else has mentioned, feedback as you're working on a task seems to be the major missing component. The overall game loop is solid; you have multiple (four) tasks to manage simultaneously (if you're going to get them done, that is), and there are various locations so that you can optimize your time spent in each place. But since you can't see your progress towards a goal and you can't see what you're doing as you're doing it, it's easy to get lost.

Though... it has the side-effect of making this a memory game. :smile:

Either way, this is a good core for a game. And it's playable as far as I'm concerned (if I can win/lose, it's playable, right?). It's too bad you didn't find the time to polish it more.

Thanks for sharing.

dob

27. Apr 2018 · 05:20 UTC

I played the web version. I couldn't find ingredients anywhere, although I walked all over my map and clicked on every station. I was able to pick up a poached dish, which had a recipe, but I could never seem to find parts of the recipe or check off the items in it. I tried for a while, but I never really got anywhere. I really like the premise (spies plus cooking), and I think if the menu system for the stations was a little clearer it might have been fun. Nice music, cool ambiance for a compo 3D game.

spthiel

27. Apr 2018 · 14:12 UTC

I can only agree with previous comments. The controls are really unintuitive.

randomphantom

27. Apr 2018 · 16:00 UTC

Couldn't really understand this.. quite a quirky concept based on what you set out above though.

nilstastic

29. Apr 2018 · 18:21 UTC

I like the idea of the game, but it was a bit hard to have control over what you are doing and sometimes I didn't really know what I was supposed to do. I really like the idea of the game though. :-)