The gods are having a competition about what’s the best food. Soon enough, the God of Food will come to your restaurant in disguise, as legends say, and you need to make them happy.
This idea was envisioned as a hybrid board game, requiring some digital device to play (on top of regular board game material).
What’s the idea?
Place one device (smartphone/tablet/…) on the table. Open the website for it. (Increase brightness + volume to acceptable levels.)
Players are working together to run a restaurant. (It’s cooperative and real-time.)
Everyone may do as many actions as they like, simultaneously, however they like.
But … everything you do takes time!
- Moving a waiter
- Preparing food (chopping/baking/etc.)
- Waiting for ingredients you ordered to arrive.
Whenever you do something, you must start a timer for it on the phone. Once it’s complete, you must take the actual action and turn off the timer. Wait too long, and you get a penalty ( + the action itself is lost)
Requirements
Unfortunately, I do think we need multiple devices.
Each device does a completely different thing (one represents the kitchen, another the waiting area, etc.). They should be able to function independently (on lower player counts or difficulty settings), but can also be used at the same time.
Why is this necessary? There is just no room for enough buttons and timers on a single device, especially on higher player counts.
IMPORTANT THING #1: Make this game extremely simple to teach and setup! The rules for Kitchen Rush are way too convoluted for my liking. (I could never get people at home to play that game this way.) So simplify that, make intuitive, allow starting and playing immediately.
IMPORTANT THING #2: Give each player their own “thing” to do and to have. Otherwise the most aggressive person will probably be the only one doing all the stuff.
- Solution 1: if you have multiple devices, it’s easier to split up and assign people to a “location” anyway.
- Solution 2: each player has their own character(s). One of the actions on the device is move, and every player can only move their own pieces. (Of course, you need to be close to something to be able to take that specific action.)
- This would work quite well! Especially if we make move actions available to anyone. So, whenever a move timer is done, any player can snatch it and use the movement. (Of course, discuss good strategies while playing.)
Orders
The sequence of steps per order is:
- Person enters your establishment (automatically? Need a table for that?)
- Send waiter. It retrieves the order.
- Get ingredients (from storage or by buying them first)
- Modify ingredients (cutting, adding spices on top, etc.)
- Combine ingredients and put into oven.
- Cook/bake as long as necessary (given by order)
- When finished, use a waiter to return it to the table.
You get money for delivering successful orders. You need that money to buy other stuff. (Are these actual coins or does the device keep track of this???)
IDEA: In case you don’t have enough smartphones, or you play your first game, some parts of this become automated? (So, instead of having to walk towards a customer with your waiter, you can immediately deliver stuff whenever it’s done.)
IDEA: As you play, you can build more stuff. This adds tiles to your establishment (kitchens, more tables to sit at, etc.) which give more functionality and more (storage) space.
- Maybe it is even more fun if you don’t know what room you’re going to get. So you have to place it somewhere on the restaurant, creating these weird layouts. (Why do I need to go through the dishwashing room to get to my table?!?)
- Maybe each tile doesn’t have one specific use, it has a mix of things. For example, a single tile could contain ONE storage space and ONE oven. (Otherwise, with a string of bad luck you might lose the game quite quickly.)
IDEA: Again, randomly generated stuff! I don’t know how useful it is to randomly generate a kitchen layout …
Objective
How to win/lose?
- When you run out of money, you can “give up”
- Randomly (after a certain time interval), a culinary critic will enter the establishment and require a specific order within a specific time limit. Deliver it and your prestige goes up. If not, it goes down (or you lose immediately??)
- If your prestige is too low, you lose. If your prestige has reached the highest level, you win.
Final Thoughts
Fun title. But the “Coward” part should return => maybe once you’ve done something to a meal, you may never touch it again? (Oh no, I’ve cooked this monstrosity! Let’s walk away now!)
MEH: Cowards has such a negative feel to it. Maybe just need something more fun and chaotic: “Chef Coop”
Or something related to the culinary critic that comes by and decides your fate. Maybe he’s like a monster or legend or something.
Or just invent a more creative win condition for this game, and base the name on that. Like:
- “you’re cooking … but on a ship!”
- “you’re cooking … but in a volcano!”
- “you’re cooking … but on a mountain!” (Maybe every failed recipe means you are thrown out the “moon door” and off the mountain. Or, your restaurant tries to become the restaurant “at the top”. With each successful phase, you may climb one height level upwards.)
Instead of giving you predetermined recipes, just allow customers to have “preferences” or ask for a vague thing.
You are responsible for knowing how to make it: get the right ingredients, cook it just long enough, add spices that work together, etc.
Must think about how this would work in practice. How to make it not confusing? How to make it easy to get into the game (without having to learn all sorts of recipes beforehand)? How to make the game playable by instinct, instead of a memory exercise?
Could even add groups entering the establishment, so you need to know how to cook the right amount of food (number of portions). Or a parent-child relationship.
Forgotten Waters => seems like a good cooperative pirate boardgame => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clHhsLthJsE