Food-Themed RPG

[ZekeyDevine]

So I've struggled with the program for a while. I like to think I have decent ideas, but little ability to actually carry them through on my own. I'll have an identically titled article in the General Discussion that goes into more detail on the story and such shortly.

So here's what I'm thinking:
Battles

• Function on a standard turn-based system, featuring a party of four characters, with two remaining static for the entirety of the game, and the other two being swappable with several unlockable characters over the course of the game
  
• In the place of Mana/Magic/Power Points to expend on special moves, the player uses Ingredients within their inventory to cook Recipe Attacks.
• Defeating enemies awards experience and a surplus of ingredients randomly dropped from a pool which is unique to that enemy type
• Defeating enemies quickly yields more ingredients as the longer the battle goes on for the more ingredients the enemy consumes to use its own recipe attacks, though you're always guaranteed a handful.
• Standard attacks exist, but they do incredibly average damage and can be completely ineffective against certain enemies (akin to how horrendous the Accuracy/Evasiveness was in Sonic Chronicles, but more balanced).

Stats and Leveling

• In theory, Leveling up would not increase the stats of your character significantly, encouraging exploration to find permanent, stronger stat boosts
  
• Leveling would, instead, primarily be used to unlock more recipes for the player to use in and out of battle
• Stats would be tied to magical Gummi Candies found in chests in various areas, requiring exploration and puzzle solving to acquire.
• Some Recipes can only be obtained from special Cook Book items. Some of these recipes can be used in the field and said field abilities can be used to uncover more Gummi candies.

Misc.

• I would like for there to be additional minigames called Cook-offs where the player would hypothetically use the skills they've acquired thus far to make a large meal to be judged against a rival, with the reward usually being progression past that point. Like a nonlethal boss fight.
• Rewards for playing the game certain ways, like only using abilities involving botanical ingredients in a vegan run, or only using pastries in a doughnut playthrough.
• A New Game Plus option that would, as the name implies, carry progress over to a new save with even higher difficulty.

What do you guys think?

 

[Kes]

@ZekeyDevine 'Game Mechanics Design' is not for feedback on individual projects. This would normally be in your early game thread in Ideas and Prototypes.

It is possible that there is a general design discussion to be had here, so I am leaving this open for the time being to see how it develops. This does mean that some replies will be irrelevant to your game, and that is fine.

In the meantime, perhaps you might find it interesting to play through Dalph's game "Al Dente Cooking Contest" to see some of these ideas in practice.

 

[Milennin]

I'd make the dish to be made the enemy in a turn-based battle, and then, each turn, have a selection of random skills distributed to the player like a selection of play cards. Before battle, players get limited spending on ingredients/actions, which serves as their set of cards to increase chances of getting the right ingredients/actions each turn. There would be a limited number of turns, which serves as the timer to get the dish done. At the end, there would be a scoring screen that checks if the right ingredients were used, if they were added in the right order and if it was cooked properly.

Could add random events, like stove failing to function, or ingredient delivery not arriving, competitors trying to sabotage you etc.