Game Concept

OVERVIEW

- Title: FARM-TO-PLATE

- Concept statement:

              Farm-to-Plate is a relaxing game where you are a chef running a kitchen, sourcing your produce from your own farm and serve them on the plate for customers. You have limited time to open your restaurant and you are trying to serve as many customers as possible to get as much money as you can.

- Genre: RPG/ simulation

- Concept creation process:

              As a real-life chef, I have always wanted to make a game about cooking yet was not sure how to implement this as simple as possible but still fun. Not until I came across this small, cute, and fun game called Mini Merchant (a js13kGames 2023 competition entry by Alexey Kalmakov). Farm-to-Plate is using a similar game play, just with different theme. Farm-to-Plate will produce different type of resources, and you will be dragging the resources/ ingredients from your farm on to the plate according to the orders that are shown on the docket. Farm-to-Plate is also going to use similar pixel art.

- Audience

              Farm-to-Plate will be most enjoyed by teenager/ young adult women who enjoyed casual, cozy game with pixel art, like Stardew Valley, as well as any cooking game, such as Diner Dash or Cooking Dash.

- Competitive analysis

              As stated above, Farm-to-Plate is hugely inspired by Mini Merchant, using mostly similar game play with different theme. I wanted the theme to be more interesting and mimic the “farm to table” type of restaurant in real life. This theme might attract more audience, because there are lots of interest in cooking game, in my opinion. However, this game is quite relaxing because what you need to do is basically just beat your own score, there are no enemies to fight nor puzzles to solve, which might or might not be interesting to some people. I also think that Mini Merchant game runs a little too long, so I might shorten the play time, while adding more stuff such as recipe book and docket line to make the game more real and interesting.

GAME TREATMENT

In Farm-To-Plate, you are a chef that is running a restaurant with ingredients that are sourced from your own farm. You will need to get your ingredients from the plants/trees that grow outside your restaurant, drag them (maybe 2/3 ingredients per meal) onto a plate on the kitchen bench according to the orders that are shown on the docket line, and send the food to the customers. You will be equipped with recipe book, where you can look up what ingredients you need to put on the plate. All food that are successfully and correctly served to customers will count towards your profit/score, while any failures (fail to send a dish correctly or fail to put correct ingredients to make a dish) will reduce your profit/score.

CONCEPT ART

This game will use simple 2D pixel art. Some examples of the art that I am going for are attached.

REFERENCES

Mini Merchant game: https://js13kgames.com/games/mini-merchant/index.html

Concept art 1: https://id.pinterest.com/pin/130745195411824152/

Concept art 2: https://id.pinterest.com/pin/265501340522659828/