Cooking Up Progress

From this development log that you’re reading, I have to get used to writing in the plural, since another person has joined the project.

Tutorial

After a few people (still very few) tried the game for the first time, we realized we couldn’t keep putting off the development of a tutorial. We needed an initial guide to help players get familiar with the game’s elements and mechanics.

For now, it’s a work in progress. With several iterations, we hope to create something useful for players—without being too intrusive.

Finance

Although Yatai Master wasn’t designed as a simulator per se, managing finances—even in a basic way—adds a strategic layer to the game. It’s part of the challenge of running a food stall and also a way to measure how well you’re managing your business.

We added a panel dedicated to showing the most important financial data. There, you can see things like total expenses, the ingredients you buy most often, the best-selling dishes, and even the losses caused by wasted ingredients.

Following the Japanese principle that “the customer is God” (okyakusama wa kamisama desu), reputation becomes the central focus of the game—the true leitmotiv of the yatai’s master chef. That’s why you can track its progress day by day through a simple graph.

Animated Ingredients

Although the game’s graphics are simple and minimal, some elements need to be instantly recognizable for the player, since they play a critical role in the game mechanics. That was the case with the ingredients. (Because no one wants to confuse ginger with a potato).

We now have all the ingredients ready, and we added a little (very little) “eye candy”: they’re now shown with a subtle animation.

What’s Coming Next

Hemingway is credited with the phrase that, roughly, says goal of a first draft isn’t to be good, but simply to exist. This game is still in “draft” state, but despite that (or precisely because of it), we need a wider audience to play it. I’m not just talking about friends who want to try it, but people outside our circle, with different experiences as players, to get feedback that will help us tweak whatever needs tweaking.

Thanks for reading.