Description
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Design Process
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Post Partum
Chef is an HTML5 based interactive stopmotion piece. You play as Chef, a happy-go-lucky cook who is bombarded by an angry customer,
and you have decide what you want to do for the customer. Maybe you should be professional and just take his order,
or maybe you can accidentally slip a few drops of the rat poison that's behind the hot sauce, or perhaps just make
his soup extremely hot. It's up to you!
I made this game because I wanted to create an experience that was close to interactive cinema. I really wanted to differentiate this from quicktime events - so the experience is not so much about high intensity action, but more akin to a choose-your-own adventure book.
Awards:
Best Freeware PC Games - PCGamer
Different Games 2015 Showcase
IndiePrize USA 2015 Showcase - Nominated for Best Narrative
Credits:
Lead Designer/Programmer/Animator - Thomas Lu
Composer - Julie Buchanan
I made this game because I wanted to create an experience that was close to interactive cinema. I really wanted to differentiate this from quicktime events - so the experience is not so much about high intensity action, but more akin to a choose-your-own adventure book.
Awards:
Best Freeware PC Games - PCGamer
Different Games 2015 Showcase
IndiePrize USA 2015 Showcase - Nominated for Best Narrative
Credits:
Lead Designer/Programmer/Animator - Thomas Lu
Composer - Julie Buchanan
Design Challenges
- This project initially started out as a 2 week class project, and time constraints were extremely tight for this type of animation. However, I wanted to create this since there are very few claymation/stopmotion based games out there that use true clay animation.
- Branching storylines ultimately lead to far more work for very little pay off. I wanted to avoid the "beads on a string" method due to the fact that a lot of players can tell when the storyline reconverges. Ultimately this project had to be scoped down due to the combinations present for the story.
- Planning out the time constraints with the rest of the project - how much time is needed after all the animation is completed? When would be a good time to say, "this is enough animation, let's go on to building and playtesting"?
Art Challenges
- This entire film was shot on my desk at home. With very little to work with in terms of actual studio production equipment (lights, cameras, green screens, etc.) and with a budget of a little under 30 dollars, there were a lot of constraints I had to take into consideration artistically to make this look good. Most of the objects created in the background were made from scraps of clothing, and/or paper.
Programming Challenges
- Time constraints with the animation lead to less time with programming. More animation content meant less implementation time. This was not a particularly bad, but since the animation was barely on schedule, it put me on edge throughout most of the project.
Design Process
Chef initially started out as a school project - we were experimenting on how to play with a game's time
flow by giving it different branching narratives.
My initial design thought was to create a game where a combination of actions lead to a consequence, and some actions had greater weight than others. This lead to me conceiving the idea of a cooking game, where a combination of things inside an item can lead to a great product, with certain ingredients having more weight than others.
Early throughout development, I decided to animate this project in stop-motion due to my proficiency in the medium.
The next big challenge was time and scheduling. Since stopmotion takes an absurd amount of time and patience to animate, I had to schedule my animation sessions accordingly in order to make the deadline. Production time was two weeks.
During the majority of the process, the designs were being dictated by how fast I could animate. Many features and story were cut out from the final development due to time constraints, and the game just turned out to be the bare bones layout of the original plan.
After the animation process was finished, a prompt programming session (with no hitches) and a rough sound session allowed the game to be finished on the deadline promptly. A few playtest sessions were held in order to ensure the best available experiences. This was the first iteration of Chef.
Chef went through some minor tweaks after its first incarnation. Two noticeable tweaks were: The music had changed from the original temp music to a fully scored piece by musician Julie Buchanan, and the hot sauce content of the meal turned into "NO!" from a certain amount. The decision for the first change was obvious, but the decision for the second was prompted after further playtests. People were not understanding that there was a possible ending when excessive hot sauce is poured in - so this had to be brought out further to entice people to use it.
My initial design thought was to create a game where a combination of actions lead to a consequence, and some actions had greater weight than others. This lead to me conceiving the idea of a cooking game, where a combination of things inside an item can lead to a great product, with certain ingredients having more weight than others.
Early throughout development, I decided to animate this project in stop-motion due to my proficiency in the medium.
The next big challenge was time and scheduling. Since stopmotion takes an absurd amount of time and patience to animate, I had to schedule my animation sessions accordingly in order to make the deadline. Production time was two weeks.
During the majority of the process, the designs were being dictated by how fast I could animate. Many features and story were cut out from the final development due to time constraints, and the game just turned out to be the bare bones layout of the original plan.
After the animation process was finished, a prompt programming session (with no hitches) and a rough sound session allowed the game to be finished on the deadline promptly. A few playtest sessions were held in order to ensure the best available experiences. This was the first iteration of Chef.
Chef went through some minor tweaks after its first incarnation. Two noticeable tweaks were: The music had changed from the original temp music to a fully scored piece by musician Julie Buchanan, and the hot sauce content of the meal turned into "NO!" from a certain amount. The decision for the first change was obvious, but the decision for the second was prompted after further playtests. People were not understanding that there was a possible ending when excessive hot sauce is poured in - so this had to be brought out further to entice people to use it.
What went right
- Animation and humor were highly praised by many publications.
- A well planned out beginning lead to the branching story lines creating a coherent story every time.
- The "funny" endings were almost always attempted by players due to their ridiculous nature. (e.g. Poison was almost always picked)
What went wrong
- Sometimes players did not realize that certain endings were different. A common playthrough was selecting poison + hot sauce, where poison overrides hot sauce due to it having a larger effect on the body in general. However, sometimes players would think that since they had already tried the hot sauce in a combination, they didn't think to create a recipe with hot sauce alone.
- Since animation took 90% of the production time, this lead to a HIGH amount of scoping down.
- Players initially ignored the hot sauce completely until the recipe was changed to not include it.
- This game was created with a very vague player experience goal, wanting it to be a "funny" animation and nothing else. The results were sometimes mixed, with players either loving the animation, or players calling it "not a game".
What I learned
- Unique art styles and simplistic story lines can give a game an enormous appeal.
- There are two types of players - one that wishes to complete everything correctly, and the other that wishes to screw around with things. It is difficult to cater to both.
- Having a well defined experience goal is critical in creating games like these. What is the animation appealing to?