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The Absentminded Chef's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Accessibility | #5 | 3.278 | 3.278 |
| Audio | #13 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Theme | #15 | 4.056 | 4.056 |
| Overall | #23 | 3.437 | 3.437 |
| Originality | #25 | 3.611 | 3.611 |
| Fun | #38 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Controls | #39 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Graphics | #44 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
3.2.3
Wildcards Used
Oregano, Duck Duck Moose
Game Description
It's time to make dinner, but a key ingredient is missing! Can you find an appropriate substitution?
Source
Maybe
Discord Username
vortexofdeduction#2468, Rosko #3445
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Comments
This is a great take on the theme. I had a lot of fun with it even though I ended up with way more bad items than good, lol. Agree with everyone, the voice-overs were a great touch.
I like it! also the stream was awesome!
A window resize option would have been nice to have, my screen was too small for the game window to show properly.
Loved the descriptions for the items and the atrocities that I ended up cooking.
It should be possible to resize the window by dragging, but I guess if your screen is too small it might be hard to reach the bottom right corner to resize.
What were your favorite atrocities? Lol
Made a sandwich with seaweed.
I just played another game that also had the same problem, didn't know that was a solution! It was my own inexperience talking, rather than anything else.
I had as much fun playing the game as reading all the lovely comments here, and now I feel like I have nothing to add XD
Voiceover, even if double was fantastic! Well done for coming back after so many game jams! I remember playing "It's Still Me" like it was yesterday :D
Aww, thanks! I had almost given up jams after that game because it was so stressful lol. But then this semester when I was like "wow I have way too much free time" I realized that was the perfect time to give another go at GWJ.
Fun and funny game! I really like the idea of the voiceovers but they would sometimes double play.
I give up. I can't seem to find the perfect extra for my soap soup. This was fun! I encountered a couple of bugs though. The voice over doesn't seem to stop when moving to something else. There were times that I could hear three different things being said at the same time. And no, I can't turn voice over off, even though I'm perfectly capable of reading. Because, you know, I just love voice overs.
Another thing which I don't whether it was a bug or a feature, was that some ingredients weren't there at first and somehow suddenly appeared. Pizza crust and bacon are two that I remember. And I don't think the chicken was always there either.
Anyway, enough with negativity. I liked that there were a lot of text written for different combinations and different ingredients. That's another thing I enjoy.
All in all, I'd consider this an excellent concept. I'm very likely to buy a fully fledged game built around this idea. Great job.
I'm so happy people like my text and voiceovers! It's always fun when I can put my humor and acting into a work.
So what's going on with the voiceover is that I made a few different audio players (accessibility, ingredient description, comment (for after you've submitted a recipe), and start). And I underestimated how easy it would be for those to overlap and be annoying (each audio player can play one thing at a time, so you could have up to 3 things going at once, or 4 if you are really fast). An update to condense this into fewer players would probably fix it.
The ingredients missing is both a bug and a feature. What's supposed to happen is that at the start of each recipe, some ingredients are taken away (because they are already put in the recipe, or because they would provide a solution that is too easy). Pizza crust and bacon are an example of this for pizza. Then, when starting a new recipe, those ingredients are reset. However, due to a bug the ingredients are not reset when you click "next recipe". So eventually your options are much more limited and some substitutions are impossible. You can work around this by going to your next recipe from the recipe select screen instead of using the "next recipe" button. (Although if you're getting those ingredients back it seems like not everyone is seeing that bug? Weird.)
And I'll give you a hint for the soap soup: it needs seasoning. What seasoning makes everything better?
I thought I need to use the Oregano as extras, but now I used them both as substitutes and voila! I got clean, spicy soap soup. Thanks for the tip!
Oh, and just in case I wasn't clear, please continue doing voiceovers in your next games too (if you can find a way to justify it for the game!). And that's not just for accessibility. It could also be used for story telling, for example. I remember when I played The First Tree, the bits of story told by the narrators were my favorite parts of the game.
This is a good game! I loved the commitment to accessibility through all the voiceovers, and creating crazy combinations was a lot of fun
If you click "Make a Substitution" before adding any ingredients it just shows a grey box, which I initially thought was a bug, so maybe adding some guidance here that the player should go to the fridge first would be helpful.
Good catch, I forgot to think of that. Glad you liked the game!
Btw, for anyone wondering about the timeline (since I feel like a few people have mentioned), it went something like this):
Neat idea. Great writing and voice over, and music. Seems like quite a big challenge to take on for a jam game (hey, a pun!) given how many different combinations you had to think of!
I found it tricky to understand if I’d done well or not… It seems I could pretty much always progress to the next recipe, no matter what I put on. I did enjoy the comments when I put something weird on. I got to Mac and Cheese and couldn’t get any further. Is that the end?
Mac and cheese is the last level. Sorry the game is missing a more decisive ending! lol.
And yeah, the feedback could be clearer. Basically, there are a few possibilities:
If that's too much to remember, just pay attention to sfx: checkmark for success, paper crumple for failure.
You always get the option to progress further, even if you failed. Given the game's difficulty and the fact that the levels don't really build on each other, I didn't want anyone to be locked out of later levels because they couldn't figure out an earlier one
I really liked this game. It's very impressive, that you managed to have a voice over for basically everything. The writing was funny and I really wanted to find all possible substitutions. Unfortunately, the game seems to crash whenever you find the one ingredient non-food substitute. That's doubly unfortunate, because finding the whacky way of making the food work was definitely the most fun part of the game for me. It also sometimes feels arbitrary which substitutes work and which don't and the game gives little guidance towards the right options. Of course, working out every combination a player could think of would be waaay out of scope. The amount of valid substitutes and extras is big enough as it is.
The setting options are really nice, but the out-of-the-box settings seem weirdly balanced. But that's just a nitpick.
All in all, I really enjoyed it though, and the game really had my kind of humor.
Yeah, I kinda put most of my life on hold to work on this lol. And as I was recording the voice overs I was like "whyyyy did I make so much work for myself" so I'm glad it paid off.
Thanks for the bug report! If/when I get to updating the game, I'll look at fixing the reported bugs, adding a hint system, and doing some playtesting to add more solutions. And yeah sometimes things feel arbitrary it's based on my wacky brain lol. That's what playtesting is for, but I didn't do any for this game because I didn't have time :(
And yeah, out of the box settings were weird because they were set to what was convenient for me as the developer, I remembered last minute (literally last minute, I think) and tried to quickly change them but didn't have time to test.
I really like the idea and the voiceovers! I also couldn't find many substitutions so I agree hints or something else would be welcome.
I liked it. I couldn't find good substitutions in any recipe (so I'd argue there's some difficulty that can be fixed with hints maybe), but overall, this was a really interesting idea. I think it could have been polished a little more. Oh, I did think the default music level was too strong for the default voice level. I really liked how you did the voice over effect, so I'd suggest toning down the music level even more by default. (I know I can change it, but I could barely hear the voice on normal level).
Thanks for the review! I agree, it could use a little more polish. If I could have, I would have cut out some content (fewer recipes and/or fewer ingredients) so I had more time to polish.
The game does give hints for several of the combinations if you provide at least one of the correct components, but given the sheer number of ingredients I can see how you might not encounter that.
If I had time, I would add achievements and you could get hints from the achievement names. I'll post the achievement names here, and then maybe if you feel like giving it another go you can find some of the substitutions. Feel free to disregard when rating if you feel that sharing this information is too much like reuploading the game. But at least you can experience more of the game with this. And if there are any you're still lost on, I can give more hints.
SPOILERS after this point, obviously. They might be too obvious, but that might be worth it if you're really stuck.
Pizza
Soup
Sandwich
Spaghetti
Omelette
Sushi
Mac and Cheese
Oh, I didn't base my particular rating on the fact that I was terrible at it. :D It was fun and a really interesting idea.