Culina: The Spirit of Cooking [BxG][Modern Day Sim/Strategy]

[netravelr]

Well, this has been the little project that myself and some of my new friends have been working on over the past year off and on. It’s been a lot of work coming, but I really like the direction that the game is going in. Without further ado, let me be the first to introduce:

Culina is a series of two acts that make up a single game which contain elements of visual novels and strategy games as you create your very own restaurant. The prologue, The Spirit of Cooking, introduces the characters, the environment, and the overall goal of the second act. It will play much like a traditional visual novel and will be free to play. Hands in the Kitchen (working title) however casts the player in the role of managing their very own restaurant, creating recipes while maintaining relationships and will be a commercial title. Will our hero be successful? It’s all in your hands!

Features

• • Build the restaurant of your dreams customizing many different aspects of it
  
  • Decide who you want to be by becoming a better cook or developing bonds with your co-workers and friends, maybe even kindling a romance
  
  • Purchase ingredients from different vendors, each with their own advantages/disadvantages
  
  • Craft recipes using purchased ingredients, drawing in potential customers based off of what appeals to them

Players will interpret information, keep records, determine prices, and plan marketing strategies. By gathering information from a variety of sources, players can make purchasing and pricing decisions. Then players will be able to see the fruits of their labors and see if their plans are profitable.

Characters

You
Blood Type: ??
Height: ??
Weight: ??
The Main Character of the Culina series is a hard working guy who wants to own and run his own restaurant on his own terms. Whether or not this is viable for him is yet to be seen. During The Spirit of Cooking, he is a student at Paloma College and is romantically interested in Emily Sutterland.


Paul Richards
Blood Type: B
Height: 182 cm
Weight: 72.6 kg
Paul is a pretty down to earth guy. His family owns and runs a produce shop that he’s very proud of and plans to work at after graduating. He’s very loyal and has trouble with letting go of people and resisting the urge to help others. During The Spirit of Cooking, he is a student at Paloma College and is dating Lisa Harding.


Emily Sutterland
Blood Type: A
Height: 166 cm
Weight: 56.5 kg
Emily loves food and has a creative mind. This leads to exciting moments in the kitchen when she’ll try out different things with varying results. Her dream is to own a restaurant one day and introduce many flavors to others. During The Spirit of Cooking, she is a student at Paloma College and is romantically interested in the protagonist.


Lisa Harding
Blood Type: AB
Height: 174 cm
Weight: 61.2 kg
Lisa is a bit of a romantic. She has a lot of goals for her life and wants her dreams to come true quickly. Because she’s scheduled her life so precisely, she worries often about whether or not things will happen as she wants them to. During The Spirit of Cooking, she is a student at Paloma College and is dating Paul Richards.


Katie Walker
Blood Type: A
Height: 167 cm
Weight: 55.5 kg
Katie is a peppy and hardworking young woman. She is saving her money to transfer to a full time university and takes classes at the local community college around her shifts. During Hands in the Kitchen, she works as the main waitress at the protagonist’s restaurant and can be romantically interested in the main character.


Dante Moreni
Blood Type: AB
Height: 186 cm
Weight: 70.3 kg
Dante is a stern looking but shy Italian. He likes to dress formally and has an intimidating aura which makes people wary of him. He is a friendly person who has trouble interacting with people as a result. Despite his naïveté, during Hands in the Kitchen, he is an excellent sous chef who works for the protagonist in his restaurant.



Claire Campbell
Blood Type: O
Height: 160 cm
Weight: 50.0 kg

Claire is a petite but strong willed woman. She has an outgoing personality but keeps her personal life private. During Hands in the Kitchen, she has shifts at the butcher where the protagonist buys his meat and helps him find the best values and cuts. She loves her work and can be romantically interested in the main character.

The Team:

Programming/Design/Story Concept: netravelr
Story/Writing: Miyuki
Character Art: archia
GUI/Additional: Nische

Screenshots:

Note: Right now the GUI and backgrounds are going to be different in the final product. That being said, if you feel you are interested in doing GUI and/or background art send me a PM, I'd love to hear from you!


As of right now, I’m kinda just reporting that we’re busy working on the project and I wanted to get the general feel as to how it will be received and confirm that there is in fact interest in a game like this. Hope you like what you see!

[Obscura]

OMG...I've actually scoured the iphone app store specifically looking for "restaurant sim games."

All they have are those annoying pay-as-you-play games, which I completely hate.

I know this won't be an ios game (yet??!)...but I am already a huge fan of this project!!! *fans self*

[Miyuki]

Haha, I'm glad to hear it! We've been working really hard on this and I hope that you enjoy my writing when it comes out.

It's so nice to finally say what project I'm working on

[kaleidofish]

A restaurant management game! I love them, but most of the ones out there are so disappointing. Did I misread what you wrote, or are you saying that we can come up with our own custom recipes? I know these features weren't mentioned, but I'm going to ask anyway... Will we be able to cook and plate the food like in those Papa's Wingeria games or get to prepare the food like Ore no Ryomi 2?

[FatUnicornGames]

Yeah this definitely looks interesting. My only thing with sim games is that there be a point, that doing the sim actually effects things in the visual novel aspect in a profound way. I just played the Gardening Sim Winter in Fairbrook and I felt the sim and visual novel aspects were disjointed. Just thought I would point that out.

Good luck! Things are looking really fantastic so far.

[Miyuki]

FatUnicornGames: No the simulation part is definitely important to the story part of the game. More so than how much money you have at the end like in Winter in Fairbrook, the original Fairbrook game didn't even have that. There will be different endings based off of how successful you are at running a restaurant. Not for the first part, which is basically a kinetic novel, but the second part definitely.

kaleidofish: You do get to pick the ingredients to make your own recipes, but I'm pretty sure there's not actual cooking involved. That might have changed (since I'm not the coder), but last I checked it's more like an ingredient check list than anything.

Thank you both for expressing interest in our project!

[CheeryMoya]

Culina is a series of two acts that make up a single game which contain elements of visual novels and strategy games as you create your very own restaurant. The prologue, The Spirit of Cooking, introduces the characters, the environment, and the overall goal of the second act. It will play much like a traditional visual novel and will be free to play.

Yay!

Hands in the Kitchen (working title) however casts the player in the role of managing their very own restaurant, creating recipes while maintaining relationships and will be a commercial title.

*single tear rolls down cheek*

It looks great so far, but the fact that the second part is going to be commercial scares me; I'm going to torture myself following progress on this game D': I'm so conflicted right now ;_;

[netravelr]

I fall asleep and when I wake up there are posts for me to respond to, this is exciting!

Culina is a series of two acts that make up a single game which contain elements of visual novels and strategy games as you create your very own restaurant. The prologue, The Spirit of Cooking, introduces the characters, the environment, and the overall goal of the second act. It will play much like a traditional visual novel and will be free to play.

Yay!

Hands in the Kitchen (working title) however casts the player in the role of managing their very own restaurant, creating recipes while maintaining relationships and will be a commercial title.

*single tear rolls down cheek*

It looks great so far, but the fact that the second part is going to be commercial scares me; I'm going to torture myself following progress on this game D': I'm so conflicted right now ;_;

Don't be worried. Rather than doing a demo, I wanted to give everyone the option to play something and see what we're all about and the kind of quality we have to offer. If you play the prologue and want to support the stuff that we're doing you have the option to, that's basically it. Just like other people working on commercial titles, getting this kind of talent on board requires me to pay them for their amazing work, and allows me to gauge if I should work on other VN projects or not.

Yeah this definitely looks interesting. My only thing with sim games is that there be a point, that doing the sim actually effects things in the visual novel aspect in a profound way. I just played the Gardening Sim Winter in Fairbrook and I felt the sim and visual novel aspects were disjointed. Just thought I would point that out.

Good luck! Things are looking really fantastic so far.

Yeah, I did feel the Flower Shop was disjointed in much the same way you were talking about only being relevant in the end game. Miyuki is right, the two parts of the game do with in harmony with each other, or at least that's the plan. If you've every played Persona 3/4 before you may notice how the RPG and VN systems work together. If you spend more time playing the RPG or mastering it you have less time doing social links, but you continue in the story. If you spend time doing social links, the RPG side becomes easier due to establishing connections with people. I really liked how that allowed players to play their own way and since I know some VN players aren't into game-side things at all I intentionally put this though into the game design.

A restaurant management game! I love them, but most of the ones out there are so disappointing. Did I misread what you wrote, or are you saying that we can come up with our own custom recipes? I know these features weren't mentioned, but I'm going to ask anyway... Will we be able to cook and plate the food like in those Papa's Wingeria games or get to prepare the food like Ore no Ryomi 2?

In Culina you are creating unique recipes based off of what you find in stores while also catering to your unique cooking style. I'll post part of the game design doc I did later, but in terms of influence, there was a game back in the day that I fell in love with growing up called Hot Dog Stand: The Works in which the entire game was buying hot dogs, setting prices, and seeing how well that did. However, I wanted to empower our players to create whatever kind of restaurant that they want, hence why I went this route. So no, you won't be plating the food, that's Dante's job

OMG...I've actually scoured the iphone app store specifically looking for "restaurant sim games."

All they have are those annoying pay-as-you-play games, which I completely hate.

I know this won't be an ios game (yet??!)...but I am already a huge fan of this project!!! *fans self*

Well, there was a period where I was thinking of using UDK/Scaleform or Unity to do the project but since I already programmed so much in RenPy to get the game to you guys sooner I've been working overtime on this guy. Glad to know there is interest!

Feel free to keep shooting questions, I'll do my best to answer them if I can.

[gekiganwing]

Looks like you're off to a good start. A mix of simulation and VN can be a potent combination. Also, I like the idea of NPCs who are starting their own relationship. If possible, let us know if Paul and Lisa will remain a couple, or whether the plot / the player's actions might drive them apart.

[netravelr]

Looks like you're off to a good start. A mix of simulation and VN can be a potent combination. Also, I like the idea of NPCs who are starting their own relationship. If possible, let us know if Paul and Lisa will remain a couple, or whether the plot / the player's actions might drive them apart.

Well, one of the most important things to me in game design is to give the player agency and the ability to influence things in the game world. That's all I'm going to say.

Loving these questions guys, thanks for them! I'm still wanting to get some assistance in terms of BGs and GUI graphics but I have some leads. I'll keep you posted as things keep happening!

[Miyuki]

For my two cents on the relationship thing, I'd say that the relationships in this game are not driven by romance. Just because you can have a romantic interest in someone else doesn't mean that that's the only thing you can do.

As mentioned, we're inspired by the Persona games and in those games, the relationships made with people are very important, but are about overcoming faults with themselves rather than getting to date someone at the end.

So, while I'm glad to know you're interested in the relationship between Lisa and Paul, if you're concerned because of character depth, please don't be. And that sentence looks like a nightmare @_@

To me, our protagonist should be someone who can open people up, keep them the same, or keep them even more distant from people emotionally. How that effects other people's relationships is something that you'll have to play to see ^_~

[Enigma]

Oh? You get to have yourown unique cooking style? Sounds interesting. I haven't played a sim game in a long time, so I'll probably mess everything up when I try, but I'm looking forward to this.

[netravelr]

Oh? You get to have yourown unique cooking style? Sounds interesting. I haven't played a sim game in a long time, so I'll probably mess everything up when I try, but I'm looking forward to this.

Thanks for the words of encouragement!


So for the most part the game is code complete so after I get the story all settled in and background/menus settled the game should be good to go. That being said, I have been having some serious thoughts lately about porting the game over to Unity and releasing the real game that way.

Part of the reason is I have a licence to use it on both iOS and Android so making the game in that one engine will enable me to give it out to a large population. That being said, I don't have the Pro version so the game would have a Unity logo at the beginning.

A long time ago I was thinking of doing the game in Unreal due to my experience in using Scaleform to do the systems, but I think that would require a lot of assets and the filesize would go up dramatically which I don't want to pass on to people playing if I can make due without it.

Anyways, that being said.. I just got in some new art in terms of a new round of emotions (angry faces) so now people can look like they disagree with you. Crazy how that slips your mind until you're putting in the script. Cheers!

[Miyuki]

*cough* Being the one waited on stinks.

I hope that you guys stay interested though and that I don't take too long.

[Steamgirl]

I'm keeping an eye on this one... it looks right up my street! <3