Recipes, Time, and Small Stories

Life happens, you know? Still, the game’s development is moving forward. Not as fast as I would like, yet it’s there, slowly taking shape. Let’s see what’s new.

The recipes

I suppose a cooking game (even one with its own quirks) can’t avoid having some way to view recipes. So now, Yatai Master lets you see all the recipes that are available.

At the moment, there are 52 recipes the player can prepare, although not all of them will be available from day one. These recipes will appear over time, either through a conversation with a customer or with a merchant. The idea is to reward interaction.

Speaking of days…

The story

After going back and forth on how to “model” the passage of time in the game, I decided to limit it to 365 days. Not one more, not one less. This makes it possible to tell a contained story, set in the final year of Yatai Master before he retires. Depending on how customers rate the food prepared by the master, the story will lean in one direction or another. What directions are those? I’d rather not reveal them just yet, though they’re not too hard to guess.

To tell the underlying story without being too intrusive, each day ends not only with a look at how you did in strictly business terms (a yatai is, after all, a business), but also with small situations that begin to surface in the master’s mind. Emotions that emerge according to the circumstances.

The markets

These transitions between days also serve to notify certain actions taking place in the ecosystem around the yatai, such as the appearance of new markets in the city.

The goal is to introduce elements—markets, in this case—that add another layer to the game, giving the player more options: cheaper prices, higher-quality products, and more people to interact with and build “small stories” that might not be so trivial after all.

The kitchen

One of the strategic elements the player can control—besides choosing ingredients of a certain quality or managing stock—is the ability to acquire new “slots” that increase the speed at which dishes are prepared.

Certain markets will sell the gadgets needed to unlock these slots.

The basics

I can’t recall a game that doesn’t have at least a basic menu (though one probably exists). The game already has a menu that’s fairly functional, even if it may change a bit later on (or quite a lot?).

The music

I’ve been adding music to different parts of the game, from the menu to transitions and some effects. I’m still not 100% convinced these will be the final tracks and sound effects, but for now they help set the kind of atmosphere I’m aiming for.

What’s next

There are already a few people testing the game, but the group is still small. I need to widen that circle to get more feedback and act on it.

The game still has quite a few bugs in critical areas, especially cooking.

The entire save system is still missing—something I’ve been avoiding for a while, but it’s becoming impossible to postpone if I want to move forward.

It’s also time to start building the “small” stories for each customer. Some will matter more than others, but hopefully they’ll add a layer that turns the game into more than just a cooking game, even if my ambitions there are fairly modest.

Did you notice I never mentioned a tentative release date? That’s how amateur this whole thing still is. Even so, I’m increasingly feeling the need for a clearer projection of when it might be available. Maybe by the next devlog I’ll have a tentative release date. Maybe…

As always, thanks for making it all the way to the end.