Adventure Chef

This was very charming and fairly hot, seeing the girls bursting out of their outfits by the end. Are you planning to continue development in any way? I’ve got some comments if so.

First, like others have said, either arrow key movement controls or an attack button further from WASD (the standard here tends to be ‘J’) would make the tedious bits magnitudes more tolerable. The game in its current state requires some fancy movements from your left ring and/or middle fingers. Ideally both of those options should be available.

Next, I would appreciate being able to continue playing indefinitely in the final area after the last scripted story event rather than the game abruptly ending. I wasn’t very efficient in the early days when I was still figuring things out and missed one or two weight stages on every girl. This didn’t really strike me as a strategy game, so having assets be permanently missable doesn’t feel quite right.

Finally, I thought the layout of the second hunting ground was significantly better than the other two, being linear with some branching paths. By the end of my runs on the first and third grounds, I inevitably had to run back through a fair bit of empty level to leave. I think they would benefit from a minor redesign.

Otherwise, I can only ask for more! Thoroughly enjoyable seeing these girls gradually get thicker and more gluttonous, routing paths through new areas, and having some agency in the order in which they grow. Dialogue was pretty cute as well.

For potential lines of future development

  • A short intro would feel nice rather than dropping you into the world cold with these two characters with an ambiguous relationship

  • More events like the extra hunt could keep the game from feeling stale (perhaps turn them into small “quests” where you have to collect food in a certain amount of time, or chase particularly fast enemies, or maybe a small logic or memory puzzle?)

  • Creating food sources with weird movement types or that require little minigames or something similar to get max yield, perhaps that only show up on later days, could similarly keep the usual grind from feeling as repetitive

And obviously, the low-hanging fruit of more girls/weight stages would be delightful, but I’m sure the spritework and map development is a huge pain, so don’t push yourself.

Overall very enjoyable experience. Nice job!

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I’d like to offer some counterpoints to that last bit…

Firstly, the linear design with the branching paths wasn’t super clear, so I found myself often proceeding along the main path by making the wrong choice, then having to backtrack the whole winding path to get what I missed. I’d much rather round the last level for things I missed than all that (it’s also a lot clearer where to go there, because it’s just a big circle).

Second, please do not make the attack button J. I do not know why that’s suggested, or ‘the standard’ supposedly, but that’s too far and weirdly-angled from WASD to be playable one-handed, and not comfortable even for two-handed play (like having the arrow keys control movement, and the other hand for the attack key and interact key)…unless you like having your keyboard sideways, and using M for interact and J for attack. :grimacing:

Lastly, I don’t think adding food enemies that are just more frustrating to get is good game design. It’s fine to add difficulty, but with the controls and attacking as they are I’d say enemies you have to chase or that moved really quickly and weirdly would be more ‘this is a nightmare’ than ‘this is a challenge’.

I do support the idea of some sort of intro (even if it’s just a text box), as well as a way to complete the job of thiccening your companions if you missed something along the way (even if it’s not hard with save-scumming and being OCD about the gathering, like me). I completely get wanting to have a little wiggle room, because some other things are not really explained (like how to get the cooking right).

As for low-hanging fruit…that weirdly made me think it would be nice to see different endings, depending on what you did. Maybe one where they’re still kinda small (making adventuring easier, but making them less happy or less capable of doing something that lets them get alternate riches?), big (regular ending), or really big (maybe so content they care about the food and fun more than the riches, and/or actually struggle to make it to/fit where they need to go to reach said riches?). I love the idea of them having to squeeze between stalagmites or something, and being barely mobile, so I had to throw it out there…but feel free to disregard me being thirsty.

Oh, and being able to play someone else would also be nice (as a lesbian, who doesn’t want to play Strong-Silent-Type McAbs), but I also get if and why that might never happen.

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I agree with most of your replies to my halfassed gameplay suggestions, because they really were spur of the moment just to give some ideas, but genuinely what are you on about with the key bindings?

Left hand on WASD and right hand on IJKL and a few adjacent keys for both hubs is common as fuck and extremely easy on the hands compared to whatever you’re trying to suggest. Have you not played a lot of PC games? That lets you use all fingers and even puts your thumbs in the ideal position to hit the space bar.

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Alright new version has fixed controls, an option to continue after the end, and a few backend fixes.

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Maybe my hands are too big, but if I did that both my thumbs would collide. There’s not enough space there. It just feels super uncomfortable to me. And that’s without going into keyboard placement. I’d have to centre the keyboard around the G key, something I do not have the space on my desk for what with the monitors, the mouse, etc.

NPC Simulator I believe they were referring to “NPC Simulator,” good game

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I think the game had a good length to it - avoided becoming too repetitive by having only a few days in each location. If you decide to add to it maybe have a new puzzle or feature on some days? Loved the sprite work, the first girl was my favourite.

Managed to get everyone max’d out then went through and tried it again performing terribly to see if it had a bad ending. Same ending but I did like that there was some dialogue about it. They still managed to gain more weight than I expected.

Looking forward to seeing what else you work on!

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The game looks fantastic. It needs a bit of polishing aesthetically, but it generally works quite well.
The controls are a bit messy at the moment. Personally, I’d recommend having the space bar as the interaction button in general, and just have attacks be the equivalent of “interact with animal”.

Hey, this was actually such a nice surprise!

It came out of nowhere but was a really neat thing to end my day.
I particularly enjoy these bitesized games that you can just play and get your fix, and I’d say you got a very good core gameplay loop in your hands here. I really liked your sprites too, and would love to see more of them.(or maybe more weight levels, I have a thing for really big assets :sweat_smile:)

If you want some unrequested advice, I’d say you already got something really cool here, and all you need is more of it. I’d advise you to moduralize your code well, so you can easily create more girls and special events, and make them happen to each other on a near random basis. Then you can get a lot of mileage out of very slight variations to the girls themselves, such as voice-lines and slight clothing changes.

On the higher effort end of the spectrum I’d say you could also add more special events unique to each girl, and more complicated cooking/harvesting systems, but that is just icing on the cake.

Well, thanks for the good end for a difficult day.

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I have literally never heard of anyone using that control scheme - and yes, I play almost nothing but PC games, and have for a good while now. I cannot imagine where you’re finding enough games with it to consider it ‘standard’. The standards are normally WASD+EF(and sometimes Q) with mouse, or something more like arrows+spacebar+shift (and maybe a sprinkling of Z through B) for simpler RPG Maker-type games. Shooters and other RPGs basically only drift from the first one I mentioned (as well as MOBAs) by tossing in things like the number row and ones like M, I, etc. Is this WASD IJKL thing like some weird keyboard-only twin stick shooter thing?

Thanks for the continued work. Might put off downloading until there’s more stuff added (if there will be), since I already got them to their biggest.

I don’t know why this is so complicated for you, mate. If the four-directional movement controls are arrow keys and the game demands one or two action buttons, it’s Z and X. If they’re WASD, it’s J and K. I’ve played dozens of flash and RPGMaker games like this, it’s standard for mouseless/controllerless 3D camera control, and it’s used in practically every rhythm game on the planet.

This was a moot point out the gate anyways since this isn’t a complicated enough game that they have to be mutually exclusive. There’s literally six buttons and no necessary analog. Why not both? Just seems like a weird thing to argue over, and an even weirder hill to die on when there’s boatloads of empirical evidence to the contrary.

Not gonna talk about this further in the interest of keeping the thread clean, but calm down, jeez.

It’s funny when people do exactly what they’re criticizing someone else for, while they’re doing the criticizing. You have fun, though - and you’re right about it being pointless for us to continue clogging this thread.

Speaking of the things not being exclusive, regarding controls: there are ways to just make the keys rebindable, even in RPG Maker. I have seen other games here do it.

Is that going to be the final limit? Or will we be able to make them even fatter with future updates?

Ooooooor, is this going to be it?

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I liked your game and your sprites are a piece of art. I’m a bit offended by the fact that while I, the chef, were out fighting miniature dragons the so-called adventureres were taking a light walk while drinking grape soda and eating fruit, but given the results, I’m not going to complain :wink:

I’m going to make some suggestions for what I think would make the game a little more interesting:

  • Cooking: I found it a bit weird that despite dividing cooking into three parts, there were only two mini games, so here’s a suggestion for a third: For adding ingredients you could use the same arrow box interface, but have one button at a time move across the bar then have the player tap the correct key at the correct timing, sort of like a cheap Guitar Hero thing.
    . Gathering ingredients: It’s a bit time consuming and there’s no real challenge other than making sure you don’t miss anything. How about making a count down timer and having the player try to gather as much as possible in the time frame? That way the multiple paths become part of the challenge, since you have to decide on an optimal route. I would suggest that this comes with a lowering of the standard for how many ingredients are needed for a full meal.
    -Fighting: Given that the creatures don’t fight back, there’s no real reason to gather ingredients by fighting, may as well just interact with them. If they were to fight back and there was a chance of having the hunt end early because of low health it would be a different story.
    -Adventuring: I would love to see some actual adventuring events. Especially some involving dialogue or actions related to their weight. Examples: Trying to take something from a crevice, swinging across a waterhole, fighting a creature, climbing a cliff, chasing down a creature with a treasure. Basically various events in where the adventure experiences succes or failure because of the increased weight.

You’ve made a great game, regardless of whether this is it or you continue working on it, so you have my thanks.

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Hi everyone,
I have a problem with the download with mediafire can you put the link on mega pls?
thx

I agree with a lot of what you said but I kind of hate how tedious the gathering can be, the one thing I thanked the heavens for was “good thing it’s not timed!” lol

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I rarely comment here, but wanted to add that I really loved this and hope to see more from you. It was easy, enjoyable, funny. Would be great to have more adventurers or stages, but hey, it’s a free game and you’ve done an awesome job.

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Here you go 369.48 MB file on MEGA

Please don’t add a timer. I beg of you.

This has been a lot of fun so far. Just so I’m not wasting any leftovers, when a character says “I don’t think I can get any bigger,” is that as big as they can get, or is there another stage or so past that?

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the maker mention about the size stages above

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