Description

• Genre:
  Cooking Simulation Game
• Made On:
  Unity
• Role:
  Gameplay Designer, Programmer, Artist
• Made for CS50 (Intro to Computing and Programming) final project within two weeks in Fall 2023 with two teammates

Tapioca Time is a a 2D top-down casual game where you try to deliver as many boba orders as possible within the time limit! The game tests the player's quick movements and familiarity with the locations of each station as they try to match the drink orders with the ingredients they gather. We were inspired by our common love of boba and also games like Overcooked and Papa's Pizzeria!

Responsibilities

• Design and implement movement system.
• Implement drink station and delivery systems in Unity.
• Create UI and Pixel Art

Skills

• Gameplay Programming and Design
• Project Management
• Unity/C#
• UI Design
• Digital Art

Design Process

Given only a two week timeframe and with none of us having Unity experience, we first made sure to target a certain scope for our final project.

How could we efficiently create a fun and simple game inspired by some of our interests? We reached to Overcooked and other cooking simulation games for inspiration and used those as a basis to try to recreate a similar gameplay loop, with our own twist.

For simplicity, we decided to keep the gameplay relatively straightforward. The player is thrown in and must learn the placements of each station and how to combine ingredients, before doing a button-mashing quicktime to deliver the boaba at the end. We found that the game tested the players' ability to learn the placements of each station and fast reaction speeds. The players get different grades on each runthrough to try to master the simple gameplay.

I helped code the gameplay loop by creating each ingredient station, and crafting the movement system. I learned from online tutorials in the first week and tried putting my own spin on the basic techniques I learned, such as retooling a dialogue system for getting UI notifications and interacting with ingredient stations. It was challenging learning and implementing at the same time while pulling back on certain aspects (eg. ideas for minigames, multiple levels, more ingredients), but we ended up finishing the project in time!

It was the first game I ever made on Unity and I learned a lot from creating a finished game at the end!