GDD
Pastry Kitchen
A group project from ACC,
Role: Gameplay Designer
I also made a few level layouts for the game as well as wrote most of the story dialogue for the game.
Challenges:
One of the big challenges working on the project was coming up with unique levels with the limited amount of objects we have. Due to our limited time and with the art team being a bit overwhelmed we needed to figure out gameplay for different levels and how to make the levels different enough to spice up the game. Over time we slowly added features to existing objects to make the game more diverse. One example is another tray that when set down doesn't turn in the order and is instead used to carry food around to pass to another part of the kitchen. This is specifically used for kitchens that are split in half.
Another challenge that I figured would be complicated is adjusting the player values. How fast do they walk and run? How much should their modifiers affect the game and cooking times? How do we counter the modifiers to balance each character to one another?
Layouts I made / Worked on:
This first layout was made to be easy. The cookbook is in the middle of the kitchen to allow a short distance to any of the furnaces. There are also two spots on either side of the cookbook to hold any cooked or uncooked food.
Using symmetry for the layout and asymmetry for the items adds some more challenges where it takes more time for one side but gives advantages to the other side. The wood is placed on the left side where we have two furnaces that have orders that take the most time to cook. Having the fire wood on the same side as those furnaces makes it easier to speed up the cooking process.
This layout was designed for multiplayer with challenge in mind. Here there are four islands, each with a slot counter in the middle where the player needs to enter between isles to reach them. Because this in multiplayer, the players can get in the way of one another adding to the difficulty and to force the players to come up with a system to work together.
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This is a collaboration between me and another designer on my team. She had originally made the layout and when we developed a way to force the players to work together in multiplayer, I modified the level to fit that playstyle. One side cooks, the other preps the food and submits.
I moved the stoves to be on one side rather than all over the kitchen. One side has the prep station (the bottom/left side) and the other the ovens. (top/right side) In the middle are the essentials for the stoves and a trashcan in the middle which can be accessed from anyone. Both sides have access to six counter spaces each while sharing four to pass orders back and forth. The small size adds to the complexity of the level, having players occasionally running into one another.
After we had made multiplayer more involved for the players, we have found that the game had become more fun, with just the simple mechanics plus a few extra steps, the mode feels like it's own and not just Singleplayer with your friends.
Simple Breakdown:
This is a video to break down the mechanics of the game. All of the core features are shown here for singleplayer like how to cook food, submit orders, put out fires, etc.