🥧 New Food Showcase + Our Selection Process

Hello everyone, Chloé here to present you today’s Patreon post!

A little while ago, we showed you all different meals in the new art style we chose for them on Patreon and social media. Since then, we have been working hard at another challenge: making a set list of food items to include for the game’s launch. I will be explaining our selection process, and will be featuring some of our new yummy foods! 

The Selection Process

We have been receiving a lot of suggestions for food to add to the game. We considered what the community suggested, did a brainstorm with the team, and then Léa and I sat together for hours on end to study the topic and create a list of different meals we would have in the game.

And that’s just a snippet of the list! So many hours went into deciding what would make the cut.

We had a few objectives in mind when coming up with the list:

1. We want different types of meals for the time of the day (i.e. breakfast, lunch, dinner)
2. We want different meals for different cooking skill levels (beginner to pro!)
3. We want some cultural variety in the meals; however, selecting only a few cultures is hard. We decided to prioritize meals that fit our objectives the most, and add further options in future game updates.
4. We want variety and choice for Paras dietary preferences or restrictions.
5. As we are only 2 artists working on this (while working on furniture items, and characters in Léa’s case), we have to be smart with our choice of food to make the amount of work necessary realistic for our small team while still having a substantial number of meals for the player to choose from.

The last point was crucial for deciding what would make it to the final list. There is a lot planned, so we needed to up our production speed for food. We prioritized meals that would offer a good variety while having the possibility of sharing the 3D object and textures. If that last bit sounds abstract to you, don’t worry; you will find examples in the section below!

Food Is Served!

Most of the food items done so far. One of the hardest things while working on food is resisting the hunger that comes with looking at food pictures all day!

Depending on the Para’s skill level, new soups will be unlocked. You will know which ones require more skill because the cream is different!

For the cream soups, we were able to create a lot of different types (asparagus, pumpkin, beet, etc) while minimizing the work required. Between the various flavors, we reuse most of the work and only need to do a few quick touchups. Tada! New cream soups can easily be created.

Pies! Do you prefer savory or sweet pies?

In this case, we chose a base pie in which the filling is mostly hidden until we cut a slice of it. As such, I only had to redraw the filling for the different types of pie we needed. Obviously, this look of a fully covered pie isn’t appropriate for all types of pies, so lemon pie will have to wait for now! (Sorry, lemon pie lovers! One day though, one day…)

Should we mayhaps add beans on toast?

For the breakfasts you see above, I created all the different elements and was able to mix and match them into different meals. Some little touch-ups here and there, and we get different spreads for our toasts, too! These will require some different skill levels, as it might be too daunting for a beginner to whip up a whole English breakfast by themselves!

Léa created this yummy pizza just in time to show you all!

Similar to the other items on the menu today, the pizza will serve as a base to iterate and create variations. Pineapple on pizza, anyone?

That about wraps up today’s Patreon post. I hope you aren’t too hungry now; I know I am, as I am typing this! I also hope this gives you some insight into our selection process for the food and what we will be showcasing in the future.

Have a great weekend! ((っ˘ڡ˘ς)🥄 🍛

Chloé

Edit - September 28th, 2023: This post is now public, feel free to share it!