Game Description

This is my 51th entry for Ludum Dare: Cookin Bash 10! ~~No, I'm not ashamed.~~

It's a small bite-sized game where you cook various meals and serve customers and clean after them. You get paid once they eat and leave. Be quick though, since you have rent and employees to pay. Otherwise you'll go bankrupt! But earn more than $300 and you'll be able to pay your own house rent!

And as per theme, your cooks, waiters, and customers finish performing various actions every 10 seconds.

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How to Play (Controls)

You only need to mouse left click.

So for the first time in my dare history I made a game that does not use a keyboard. Complicated controls was always one of the main drawbacks of my game, so this time I made the controls extremely easier and made it mouse-only, L-Click only to be exact.

Originally, I did not disclose any how-to-play. However, I've decided to acknowledge some of the suggestions that it can be confusing without a guide. Technically you are encouraged to figure things out on your own, if you want to play the game and experience a semblance of a challenge.

The game can be a little too easy when you know everything. However, if you just want to get the feel of the simulation and just have fun cooking and serving customers, here are the exhaustive list of everything you should be aware of:

General Hints: !> - You can click on the cook or the waiter to set as active character. You can only have one active at a time. Don't forget this. !> - The waiter can only interact with the dining area, while the cook only the kitchen. Make sure to have the right one active. !> - There are 3 counters on the above left side of the kitchen where the waiter and cook can interact. This is the only section that is open to both. Use this area to exchange items between the two. !> - There are actions performed every 10 seconds. I'll call it the (countdown) cycle from now on.

Cooking Hints: !> - The fridge and veggie box is where you can get ingredients. The fridge has egg and milk. The box has cabbage and tomatoes. They can't be served raw, press on the appropriate utensil while holding it to begin cooking. !> - The egg can be fried in one of the 3 pans. Let them cook until the cycle ends. !> - The cabbage can be cut to make salad (green and red plate) with the cutting board in the middle. Let them cook until the end of the cycle. Despite how it looks, you don't mix cabbage and tomato. (I'm sorry that actually was my intention but I had no time to implement mixing ingredients.) !> - Both tomato soup (red plate) and milk can be prepared by clicking the dishes/cups at the bottom. !> - The coffee machine does not require any ingredients, just click and wait till countdown ends. Must be empty-handed, like the fridge and veggie box. !> - Use the sink to throw/wash away absolutely anything, not just dirty dishes but also raw ingredients. There's a wait penalty for doing so however.

Waiter Hints: !> - Click on the receptionist once there are customers. Then click on a table to have them seated. !> - Once the timer hits, the customers will automatically give requests. Receive dishes from the cooks via the aforementioned counters then give it to them. It must be the right dish or else the cursor wouldn't even be active. !> - Once both customers of the table are served, they will immediately start eating. It will take 2 cycles before they automatically exit, when they also leave dirty dishes behind. Give the dishes back to the cooks so that they can wash them. The customers cannot be seated on tables with dirty dishes!

Once again, if you want the initially intended experience, you're sort of recommended to not open the spoiler tags.

You know you only have to l-click to progress, and you will receive mouse hover hints. Technically that is what you only need to beat the game. Try to treat it as a clicker adventure game where you know nothing at first but eventually find things out!

The game loops itself should you game over (when money goes below 0) and you can replay by right-clicking again should you finish the game. It's a bite-sized game that wouldn't take too long to see the ending.

Version History

This is for the github. But I do have to disclose here, which can also be inferred from the comments: the original version had a critical crash bug. I solved it immediately (Unity build time took longer than me fixing the code), along with a couple of other very minor bugs and a right click to restart feature rather than left click.

Otherwise the game is the exact same version as the original. I was going to upload it as an Extra but I've decided the crashing version was too weird to keep it uploaded. So I replaced the original itch.io page with this newer version. I wonder if hotfixes this late is equivalent to cheating? The game itself was finished in 3 days, you can check the v(1.0) version date of the github log. There is absolutely no feature difference. But let me know if this can become a problem.

Creation Process

There used to be a very long log here, detailing the minute process of my game creation; however I've decided it could be overwhelming to those who just came in to play. So I've chosen to move the entire thing to github README.md (where there's also no wordcount limit). If one wishes to read it, the link is right below. Meanwhile I'm leaving some pics of my sprites and scripts. I may also write a post on the feed introducing my game.

Sprites

This is the tool I made myself for personal use! I might share it with others one day.

Sprite prototyping is one of my fortes, or at least where I have the most efficient workflow compared to other areas.

Scripting

I have to admit, I was not expecting this phase to move so slow. But it did this round.

Moral of the story: do not write maintainable, scalable, reusable code for a program that does not have to be scaled/maintained. Get things done fast during the dare, no need to write perfect code.

Overall

I did manage to finish, despite things moving particularly slow this dare. It was an interesting theme to say the least, and the programming (including the importer bugs) made me want to give up a couple of times, but I did manage to finish a working small game eventually!

Hopefully things move a lot quicker next time and I learn from my lessons. There was so much more I wanted to add and I'm confused about the time it has taken to create this small game. Maybe there's more to cooking dash than I realized.

But all in all, I finished the game! And I'm glad I didn't throw in the towel. I made it to the very end again this year.