I love how your devlogs are always concise, to the point where these videos are just as exciting to look forward to as the actual game. Wishing for Chef RPG to get all the attention it deserves 😊
For the greenhouse maybe you can pay April extra to turn on sprinklers each day to water the plants. Also, maybe food waste from the restaurant can be converted into fertilizer. Love your work, it's looking great!
Really hope herbs make it into the bush section, and pottable herbs in the restaurant itself would also be amazing. Re: roots, the wood from fruit trees, whether as logs or chips, is often used to great effect for smoking and barbecuing things, if you have a grilling station/mechanic in the resto.
Cool stuff! An idea for the green house would be to be able to upgrade the overall green house. Say one upgrade installs an over-head watering system that waters all the plants automatically. Another upgrade could be "compost dirt" where it takes waste from the restaurant to fertilize the soil, giving you higher yields when you harvest! Could be some other upgrades too for the green house - but overall its looking great! Keep up the great work!
Yes! I was absolutely going to recommend overhead sprinklers instead of the whole manually placing down and puzzling sprinklers on the ground. And by having it so that your character can just sorta hire someone to make the upgrades, it takes the focus off that whole farming aspect and back to the cooking 🤩
It would be cool if you can grow limited time things like pumpkins, but they would need a lot of care since they are special items. Also it would be cool if you could design a custom sign for your restaurant and being able to deliver food to people.
Yeah can totally have pumpkins during autumn. We do have a sort of food delivery/takeout system for bulletin tasks. Might expand on that in the future.
@@NicholsMediaPress He might be avoiding talking about it since its a red card and probably a bit hard to do, but lets keep our hopes up It looks like an amazing game
I was just about to sleep and honestly all your Devlog are so calming I made a playlist to listen to as I fall asleep. Good work again, amazing information, and concise.
I can't believe how far Chef RPG. Farming is going to be a fantastic addition to the world. By the way, your devlogs are the best format out there. Nothing is superfluous. Amazing work, Noah!
I love that he's learning lessons from games of the past like Stardew Valley and using their shortcomings and successes to guide his hand!! This game is going to be great!
I'm always excited to see updates from you. It's incredible how its taking shape. I look forward to the play experience myself and everyone will have once this is released to the world. Thank you for your hard work. Please get ample rest between work too
You could "re-purpose" sprinkler systems that offices use (the ones on the ceiling) to introduce a sprinkler system without copying Stardew Valley. Have the player gather some raw metal materials and an NPC that can make pipes. Then the player has to place the pipes individually, growing the network as the greenhouse grows. But they don't sprinkle automatically, the player has to turn up to turn the wheel manually to make the water flow, then shut it off before the soil floods. So they still have to be present in the greenhouse, but it makes the task 90% easier through them getting pipes in place. Upgrades could make the water flow quicker, filter water to make plants grow better quality, what ever you think.
Ceiling sprinklers are a cool idea. Yeah didn't want to do the exact same sprinkler system. Stardew plants are the same size, so those grid-based sprinklers make sense. Would definitely require something different here!
Showing the growth progress icon on plants is actually great as an accessibility feature - for colourblind folks, it can be EXTREMELY hard to see red fruit on bushes or trees. Being able to hover over a tree with your mouse and see the plant is ready to harvest would be awesome.
Just a suggestion and AGAIN you've probably thought of it but the option to place planters for smaller plants etc to make the greenhouse more personal. Also maybe sprinklers could be added that can automate your watering process (to a time limit such as a set amount of water storage). I think that these additions would really help to elevate your game. Also there's no need to add these as they are a personal opinion :) Edit: also having smaller plants like herbs could be multiplied across the planters. For example 5 basil plants for every 1x1 square.
@@PixelArchitect Maybe for something like herbs? They could be counted as a raw material, like the roots, and could be used for brewing/adding something special to meals?
I'm really impressed by people who can do design, art and programming at same time. Every details of this game showed in Devlogs looks so amazing and well made
looking good! I love the system so far! A couple ideas: - I'd make differentiation of roots rather than a generic "Plant Roots". It could let you have more varied use-cases: you don't use Ginger Root for the same thing that you use Birch Root for - flowers as an additional as a distinct set of plants. one could use for brewing (mead anyone?) or garnish (or decoration) could have a slightly and subtlety different variation from fruit, veggies, roots, etc. - Hybridization: something you don't see much in farming mechanics is hybridization. A skill could let you splice similar trees and plants together. Imagine growing one tree that could produce both Lemons *and* Oranges but would only take up one tree-space (though it would yield less than a dedicated lemon and orange tree would each yield?). This will let you play "wide" in limited space of the greenhouse (producing a small amount of a wide variety of outputs) rather than playing "deep" (a large output of few varieties).
I want to thank you for making these videos and the game, I'm not in the best mental place rn and this video gave cheered me up a bit and gave me something to look forward to. Once again thank you and I'm very excited to see where this channel and game goes.
I just love the art work. Can't wait to play it myself. Don't push yourself very hard and don't release game too soon, this kind of games need to be fully developed.
i’ve been here since the first video you posted and now i’m seeing your chef rpg all over gaming tik tok and youtube upcoming recommendations. i feel so proud of you even though i don’t know you. i can’t wait to buy this game, the pixel art is outstanding and you keep improving your own style. your game is already on my top tier art styles and this comes from an art student :) thank you so much for sharing your process and i hope you’re having a really good time on this project.
It not only looks beautiful, but I think you made some very good design decisions in terms of quality-of-life. For example, knowing how long a plant will take to sprout, as well as having the box around each seed let you know whether something is a plant, bush, or tree, is a very good choice~
Always a highlight of my day when a new devlog pops up from you. The way you explain stuff is almost zen. So looking forward to game release. For now just the next devlog.
I am so excited for this game! You could add a hose that can spray a larger area of the map at once, or a sprinkler system you can spend a lot of money on that auto waters the whole greenhouse every morning at 6 AM or something like that.
these videos are so cool! i love how you go over your thought process and what you plan to do. you consider the weaknesses and reflect on what could be done better, which is really inspiring. seeing behind the scenes with the animations and code is really interesting since i havent seen much like it. i hope to be able to work on a big project at this level one day. thank you for the videos and the hard work, i hope development goes well and really cant wait to see future growth. good luck! 💪✨
Great progress! 🎉 One idea to further connect farming and restaurant gameplay: Maybe the player could grow flowers or pot offshoots to then use as decoration objects in the restaurant. 😊
To add variety of trees you could build them out of layers of sprites and generate the tree procedurally with those sprites. There could be a trunk that has a random sprite, maybe random scale too, and foliage sprites that would randomize the sprite, amount of sprites, offsets to those sprites and their layer order. Use formulas to generate those values based on a random number called a "seed" (pun not intended, that's what its called) generated when you plant the tree and store that seed with each tree. For example, if you have 3 trunk sprites and your seed is a random number between 0-1, trunk sprite = seed * number of trunk sprites (floored to get rid of decimal numbers). Foliage number = seed * max amount of layers you want + min amount of layers you want. Do that for each value and you have procedurally generate sprite trees.
I'm excited that you said "final stretch of development" ^_^ Also been enjoying your timelapse videos whilst chilling before bed. Keep up the excellent work!
I think the greenhouse is a great idea because irl, some restaurants have a small garden or a greenhouse where they grow herbs and easy things with short shelf life like tomatoes and greens such as lettuce and spinach. So I think something like that would be really dope and have to hunt/forage/buy/help villagers for the other ingredients
Would absolutely love to see some herbs implemented. Not generally a part of farming-oriented games, but highly relevant to a cooking-oriented game. Could also be relevant to the brewing aspect, as things like gin, absinthe, and bitters are highly dependent on their botanical components.
Amazing work, and I love the aesthetic of this game! If you dont mind though i would suggest to avoid the refilling mechanic for the water can, as I dont think its particularly interactive or fun and could make what is ultimatelly a side activity of the game somewhat clunky. If you wanted to have a sense of progression with different tiers of watercans (not sure if the different sprites you mention are for that or simply aesthetical) I would much rather go for giving them the ability to irrigate more plants at once rather than having a higher water capacity (again, it wasnt exactly clear to me what the other watercans were meant to do , but I hope these coments were usefull eitherway) Keep up the great work!
Your game looks INCREDIBLE, i cant even believe you ponder about finding another artist to redo the trees etc., they already look so elaborate and detailed! Really psyched about your game, super looking forward to experiencing all the beautiful pixels for myself. We are so blessed out here you keep updating us with your devlogs. It's so fascinating to follow your workflow and impressive to see how you just pixel ahead from scratch. Thank you!!!
Looking great! Gonna agree with some people here that you definitely need a way to no longer have to manually water. Whether hiring someone, sprinkler system, etc. Watering every day would just take too much time away from the Chef’ing and the RPG’ing IMO
One thing that I used to love while working in a restaurant was seeing all the restaurant staff-both front and back of house-throw together things from the kitchen's pantry, or use common ingredients and sauces to augment their packed lunches. Some of the best food I've ever eaten was when the sous chefs were just messing around, using up leftover components of that day's dishes that would have otherwise been thrown away, and ingredients that had too little left to be repackaged and stored. The bartenders were given liberty to sometimes mess about and invent or remix their own drinks, some of which actually got on the official menu. It would be a nice feature to include in the game. (sorry this comment is late! I'm binging the playlist again)
Happy to see more advances and hear about your experciences with them. This game is full of love. BTW the idea of planting wherever you prefer, considering if it will fit in the spot, it's fantastic and allows players to spread creativity.
Something i think would be cool is a composter, sometimes you can be full of objects and items that you don't want, and simply throwing them away makes all your work worthless, that's why having a composter like the one on minecraft, that as you fill it when you reach the top you would earn a fertilizer. Something I miss in all farm games are worms, worms are super important to develop a vegetable garden, it would be nice if on rainy days we could dig the earth and find worms put it in the greenhouse to make the soil more fertile, worms could be used on plants so that when they grow larger they produce more items, because to be honest it's really annoying when a game forces you to farm the same resource for hours, instead of giving you ways to improve your current production.
I think instead of using sprinkles, you could add a water irrigation system that doesn't take space of the farm, as it's already very tight, it would also be more "realistic". Loving all the progress
Since you can only plant in the greenhouse, I think sprinklers could be a greenhouse feature. You could upgrade the greenhouse to have a sprinkler system that automatically waters all the tiles instead of having to manually place several sprinklers around the place.
the roots are a cool idea. i like the idea of each plant giving their respective roots, something that could be used for teas, or as an ingredient, etc. like orange root tea for example. i think it's a fun way to inject some creativity into the game, even if it's not really something that would taste good in real life. it gives the world some extra character, instead of being a 1 to 1 mirror of the real world. like stardew's ancient seeds. also opens the door for more traditional root foods like ginger. i also think it'd be a cool way to let you make stuff like rootbeer, maybe with some interesting twists by adding different plant roots. like strawberry root rootbeer, etc
Great as always! You could perhaps: - Add a grinder to make spices for (Peper, Cumin, Dill etc). - Make certain foods expire. Perhaps a system where you get more points/exp the fresher the ingredients you are using? - Add a FIFO system. Extremely important when working in a kitchen. - A freezer/fridge system. Perhaps with icons above items that are about to expire? I had more ideas but these are mostly related to what you can farm! If you have more questions... I have been a chef for years so I know the ins and outs. Some of these ideas might or may not translate well to the game. Good luck!
The game looks fantastic so far. I love the addition of a greenhouse as opposed to just a plot of farmland. I've found that one thing that can make gameplay more tedious and less fun is how long it takes to water everything, especially if you're mainly planting single-square plants. Maybe the watering can could be upgradable, but instead of just getting a better watering can, you can get a hose or a sprinkler system that waters multiple plants at once. I think it would make sense for a greenhouse to have or be able to get overhead sprinklers.
i could see the sprinkler system being a permanent upgrade you could earn by a quest--or gathering enough materials and currency to have an npc install them in the greenhouse! that way players can speed up the farming process by eliminating the time needed to manually water their crops. then that new free time can be used elsewhere and they would feel rewarded for the hard work put in to earn the sprinklers.👍😁
A couple of ideas for farming specific to a chef game: 1) composting leftovers: not sure how fun this would be, but it would be unique. 2) Getting a "farm-to-table" bonus to dishes cooked with local ingredients
Love the idea of a greenhouse! Maybe if we could upgrade the greenhouse, having sprinkles from the top of the greenhouse coming down to water the seeds every day would be even easier/take less time for farming. Just a thought, can't wait for the game to come out ❤
OMG, this game looks absolutely amazing. It has everything I like: cooking, growing, socializing, discovering, hunting, gathering. the atmosphere looks magnificent and so alive. I can't wait anymore, I hope the game will be released soon. Congratulations for your work, your ideas and the way you realize them. that's wonderful! I'm so hyped!!!
OMG I'VE NEVER CLICKED A VIDEO SO FAST!!! I love your videos and your game and how you incorporate elements of other games that make them fun and also consider factors that might make a game become boring or hinder gameplay to make your game more enjoyable and improve the player experience! You're probably one of my favorite gamedev youtubers and I can't wait to play the finished game someday 😁
Looking at the pixel art designs, they are great you managed to make them diverse and varied without being cringe or feeling like "unique and special Tumblr style". Great job. You can feel the personality and they look "realistic" without making them ugly or putting a hideous nose on them. It's very nice to see that.
the art is absolutely amazing wow simply just wow. I don't think many understand how hard it is to make pixel art look this good. Every asset I've seen just perfectly fits the vibe of the game and the style is always so consistent huge props man.
Another based update. I really like the approach of having a greenhouse for farming instead of a huge field so that we can focus more on the core gameplay which is the restaurant management side and not get overwhelmed.
A suggestion I’ve had while looking at these devlogs: how about a dress code for staff in your restaurant? Like if it’s a tavern maybe it has a very relaxed dress code or none at all, but in a high end restaurant, you must have uniforms, tied up hair and a certain level of professionalism to how staff look. I’m not sure, maybe it’s a little unnecessary, but I thought that it may add to the desired atmosphere of a restaurant that the player wants later into the game. PS, I’ve loved seeing the progress of Chef RPG, keep up the good work!
Every new update to this project is so exciting! The idea of digging up roots for your restaurant is so fun and I just love the depth that I've seen in each aspect of this game
I've always wanted to play a restaurant game where I can grow my ingredients. I've always wanted to see varying degrees of quality associated with certain dishes when using high-quality ingredients. Having the option to manually pick from plants and drag the fruits into a basket as well. An incentive to do that might be higher-quality ingredients? Doing this over and over again could be unfun so there'll need to be some considerations. Just some ideas I've thought about. This looks to be one of my most anticipated games. Great work!
Loving these devlogs, thank you for sharing them with us. As for suggestions, I think in most farming games I've played, flowers in particular doesn't serve a lot of purpose except for looking pretty, or becomes just another one time cash trade, but not as exciting as vegetables for some reason. I think if there was a way to implement having different flowers attracting specific pollinators, a beekeeping system, or even a system to keep the flowers as decoration inside houses forever would make them a lot more exciting to grow.
i bought the game 2 days ago and finding out theres a dev log today cuz i didnt know how to unlock the greenhouse is so cool worth every penny i hope you get all the success you deserve
Working on my own cooking-related game and feel as though the odd rare mutant species might make things interesting (e.g., *extra-spicy* peppers, or something like that) - love your work on Chef RPG so damn much so far!! Thank you so much for the videos!!
SO fascinating to follow your dev log videos. I've started working on my own game and when I'm feeling low sometimes I watch these videos and it's refreshing and inspiring.
You can add condiment crafting, based on seeds and roots like having coriander seeds, and use other condiments to make things like garam masala, same with roots, you can also use roots to replant some crops just like in real life, since not all crops give seeds, and in case you wanna use the seeds you get to make condiments, you can use the roots to make more crops (you will have to make the root drops lower). Also make tea from fruits and things like that
For the culinary aspect of growing ingredients, harvest timing is super impactful. By providing the player an option for early or late harvest to impact ingredients/flavors you could incentivize players to invest in proper harvesting of plants to bring out the best flavor of a dish or drink. (Think early harvests for baby spinach, olives used in olive oil, or certain grapes used in wine vs late harvest spinach being bitter or ripened wine grapes changing the flavor profile.
I love the flowers!! I wonder if we are going to have some vanilla haha!! I think adding the path around for the main character to work is awesome! I really love whenever you drop a video. Thanks!!
Watching these have become a highlight overall. I love watching the process! I genuinly can't wait for the game. As for cool game features maybe bees? Honey and Wax could be useful for cooking and crafting. Plus there could be an inherant benefit of bee being around plants to help incerase their growth. Perhaps there is only bee box that can be made avalible to avoid this passive increase from being the best way to improve plants passivly. but it could be cool to collect honey and have that be used in dishes to improve them or for desserts and such.
First time watching one of your videos and I loved it, I'm going to watch them all. I don't know much about your game yet (and as you said, it's not a farming game) but I wanted to contribute some possible ideas or inspirations: 1) plants would need certain conditions to be planted, grow and/or bear fruit. Like an ability/skill, acquired knowledge, stat treshhold, environmental condition (specific soil, temperature, light, humidity, etc), pollinators. 1.1) Super specific and esoteric conditions for some plants would bring diversity to the greenhouse, such as: >It needs to be watered with a different liquid (alcohol, milk, blood, honey, acid, etc.) to grow. > A carnivorous plant that needs to be feed meat. > Underwater. > Darkness. > Away from other plants (or next to a specific one). > Need music If your game has magic: > Only grows on magic crystals. > A spell. > Consume Souls (need to kill something or destroy a "soul stone" ). 2)If ingredients have tiers, farmed ingredients could have a higher quality, possibly scaling with the character's ability. 3) Combining the two previous suggestions, conditions could also influence the speed, quality and quantity of ingredients produced. 3.1) A plant could, under different conditions, produce different types of ingredients. Like a spice flower when dry or a fruit when moist. 4) The greenhouse could be the ideal way (or the only way) to have a supply of some of the rarest ingredients. Example: planting and producing a spice that can only be acquired through an NPC merchant who appears once a year. 5) Late game, have skills and techs to automate the most repetitive work, in the form of machines, employees or magic (if you have magic). 6) Bees to pollinate and produce honey? 7) Dangerous plants that make it necessary to take specific precautions when dealing with them. Such as poisonous/hallucinogenic/stinking plants, thorns, attracting pests, weeds (the plant spreads if not contained), kills nearby plants. Even effects that could cause town events such as disease spread, invasive species or some kids that sneak inside and eat the funny looking mushroom. 8) Improve Strains? (again, it's not a farming game. But suggesting it doesn't hurt, maybe a future dlc?) Change the conditions that the plant needs to germinate/grow/produce ingredients. Improve the speed, quality and quantity of ingredients produced. Change the type of ingredient produced.
Just wanna say, been watching this series from the very beginning and im getting more and more excited each video you bring out about this game. Keep it up and cant wait get my hands on it
The idea of a watering system could work but because of the area provided, it could push the game further into farming Sim territory. It could be good to implement an irrigation system that connects to the tap - like laying a hose with holes in it down the grid - so you still have to water your crops but you can do it all at once. Complex farming could involve planting all the crops that need heavy watering in one place and the ones that don't need regular watering in a different zone that won't be overwatered (which could come with consequences like rotting plants or worse quality in ingredients). Love the series, keep up the great work!
I’m SO excited. The funding was the most money I ever spent on a developing game and it was the most excited I ever felt! Thank you so much for your updates.
I'm extremely excited for this game to be released, I already have it wishlisted in steam. I can definitely see myself sinking lots of hours into it especially after watching your dev blogs.
Maybe In a future update after release you could add different plants to make beverages. It would be so cool to plant coffee beans for coffee, or tea leaves for ginseng, green or even matcha tea all from scratch. It’s also pretty versatile as most tea leaves look pretty similar!
I seriosuly gotta say I LOVE the devlogs! They're so interesting to watch and it just makes me SUPER excited for the game, aswell as giving me inspiration to do my own creative stuff! Keep up the amazing work!! :D also I love how the greenhouse turned out! Just in general, everything looks so wonderful and I love how it's turning out! . Really am excited for the game haha
I’m looking forward to this game so much!! I love cooking games and cozy pixel games but you rarely see many cooking games that can do both! The art is surly stunning and the world looks so lively! I can’t wait to see interactions with NPCs too! I think this game would really benefit from something like a friendship system and romance options to really make the player feel immersed and make the world seem more alive!! Keep up the good work! :)
this is my first video im seeing of yours. As a long time fan of life sims like stardew and habbo im so excited for this. I can tell just 3 mins in how much work you have put into this and i cant wait to play it!
I think that you could add a little box or table that grows herbs where the water is, like a long rectangular planter, or a smaller one, but that gives you X5 mint so you don't have to take up space in the dirt and it isn't a bothersome activity getting herbs for a recipe, also it would be realistic, usually when you harvest herbs you take a few leaves from the plant and wait for them to regrow so you can take more
here some suggestions: -i notice that when you walk behind a tree, the character visual is obstructed by the tree, maybe change to when a player walks behind an object or a tree it will be "see through". -what if to unlock the green house, you need to max friend stat with april so that she will be willing to sell the green house for you. after befriending her, grind a little of money to buy the green house. -option to upgrade the green house space (option to make it bigger or maybe add another floor). -ability to grow herbs and spices. -add a trellis decoration for vining plants like grapes. -ability to grow flowers which can be used to decorate your restaurant or sell to a flower shop.
I'd suggest for the watering issues would be adding them to the level starting with ground water where trees never require water again and will occasionally water the smaller plants. Next is a greenhouse upgrade that lets you enable ceiling sprinklers. I'd also add to have special guests have access to the greenhouse like wedding events or simple gathering or just the occasional cuppa tea
Greenhouse upgrade suggestions for farming mastery... - Hydroponics upgrade: adds overhead sprinklers, automatically waters all squares once per day - Composite Soil Upgrade: food waste from restaurants is utilised to produce higher quality ingredients which boost meal quality - HPS lighting upgrade,: installs roof lighting allowing plants to get light over night, decreases grow time by 1 day for slow growing plants - Humidity control upgrade: adds a visual slow spinning fan to the back wall for improved c02 ventilation control, plants produce slightly increased yields - Green thumb skill / reward: indicators for plant grow time and quality revealed to player
Take your time with this! It looks amazing so far but taking all that extra time for the extra 5-10% of polish will really make this game shine as bright as Stardew. Super excited to play
I love how your devlogs are always concise, to the point where these videos are just as exciting to look forward to as the actual game. Wishing for Chef RPG to get all the attention it deserves 😊
Ngl, I think the plants are absolutely adorable as they are and work really well with the rest of the aesthetic. No redraw needed!
Absolutely agreed! The animation could use some love, though.
For the greenhouse maybe you can pay April extra to turn on sprinklers each day to water the plants. Also, maybe food waste from the restaurant can be converted into fertilizer. Love your work, it's looking great!
Really hope herbs make it into the bush section, and pottable herbs in the restaurant itself would also be amazing. Re: roots, the wood from fruit trees, whether as logs or chips, is often used to great effect for smoking and barbecuing things, if you have a grilling station/mechanic in the resto.
I want to second this!!!
I third this
Cool stuff! An idea for the green house would be to be able to upgrade the overall green house. Say one upgrade installs an over-head watering system that waters all the plants automatically. Another upgrade could be "compost dirt" where it takes waste from the restaurant to fertilize the soil, giving you higher yields when you harvest! Could be some other upgrades too for the green house - but overall its looking great! Keep up the great work!
Yes! I was absolutely going to recommend overhead sprinklers instead of the whole manually placing down and puzzling sprinklers on the ground. And by having it so that your character can just sorta hire someone to make the upgrades, it takes the focus off that whole farming aspect and back to the cooking 🤩
yeah deff
Glad to see you got here with your game, i really hope I can play your game someday just to have a relaxing time with my coffee at rainny day ☺️
I hope so too! You paint a very relaxing picture. I want to do that now haha
It would be cool if you can grow limited time things like pumpkins, but they would need a lot of care since they are special items. Also it would be cool if you could design a custom sign for your restaurant and being able to deliver food to people.
Yeah can totally have pumpkins during autumn. We do have a sort of food delivery/takeout system for bulletin tasks. Might expand on that in the future.
Will this have multuplayer, so I can play with my girlfriend?
@@PixelArchitect Do you intend to add co-op into the game? Maybe local co-op
@@MsGraveDiggeRRRR Local co-op would be amazing
@@NicholsMediaPress He might be avoiding talking about it since its a red card and probably a bit hard to do, but lets keep our hopes up
It looks like an amazing game
I was just about to sleep and honestly all your Devlog are so calming I made a playlist to listen to as I fall asleep. Good work again, amazing information, and concise.
I can't believe how far Chef RPG. Farming is going to be a fantastic addition to the world. By the way, your devlogs are the best format out there. Nothing is superfluous. Amazing work, Noah!
The colour palette for this game is still one of my favorite aspects, it feels so calming
I like saturated colors
I love that he's learning lessons from games of the past like Stardew Valley and using their shortcomings and successes to guide his hand!! This game is going to be great!
Stardew valley: BEST GAME EVER!!!!!!
I'm always excited to see updates from you. It's incredible how its taking shape. I look forward to the play experience myself and everyone will have once this is released to the world.
Thank you for your hard work. Please get ample rest between work too
You could "re-purpose" sprinkler systems that offices use (the ones on the ceiling) to introduce a sprinkler system without copying Stardew Valley. Have the player gather some raw metal materials and an NPC that can make pipes. Then the player has to place the pipes individually, growing the network as the greenhouse grows. But they don't sprinkle automatically, the player has to turn up to turn the wheel manually to make the water flow, then shut it off before the soil floods. So they still have to be present in the greenhouse, but it makes the task 90% easier through them getting pipes in place. Upgrades could make the water flow quicker, filter water to make plants grow better quality, what ever you think.
Ceiling sprinklers are a cool idea. Yeah didn't want to do the exact same sprinkler system. Stardew plants are the same size, so those grid-based sprinklers make sense. Would definitely require something different here!
Showing the growth progress icon on plants is actually great as an accessibility feature - for colourblind folks, it can be EXTREMELY hard to see red fruit on bushes or trees. Being able to hover over a tree with your mouse and see the plant is ready to harvest would be awesome.
My man brought up HABBO. What a deep cut. ❤I love these dev logs and I’m so excited to see the progress you’ve made on Chef RPG.
Just a suggestion and AGAIN you've probably thought of it but the option to place planters for smaller plants etc to make the greenhouse more personal. Also maybe sprinklers could be added that can automate your watering process (to a time limit such as a set amount of water storage). I think that these additions would really help to elevate your game.
Also there's no need to add these as they are a personal opinion :)
Edit: also having smaller plants like herbs could be multiplied across the planters. For example 5 basil plants for every 1x1 square.
Smaller planters are a cool idea. I'll look into it. It would add more visual variation to the scene, and also a bit more complexity to the farming.
@@PixelArchitect Maybe for something like herbs? They could be counted as a raw material, like the roots, and could be used for brewing/adding something special to meals?
@@PixelArchitect that was exactly my thought I'm glad you will look further into this idea :)
You could also have the dug up trees droop wood that can be used to age alcohol with special flavour types
Ah thanks for the tip! Could be an interesting addition. I'll look into it :)
I'm really impressed by people who can do design, art and programming at same time. Every details of this game showed in Devlogs looks so amazing and well made
looking good! I love the system so far!
A couple ideas:
- I'd make differentiation of roots rather than a generic "Plant Roots". It could let you have more varied use-cases: you don't use Ginger Root for the same thing that you use Birch Root for
- flowers as an additional as a distinct set of plants. one could use for brewing (mead anyone?) or garnish (or decoration) could have a slightly and subtlety different variation from fruit, veggies, roots, etc.
- Hybridization: something you don't see much in farming mechanics is hybridization. A skill could let you splice similar trees and plants together. Imagine growing one tree that could produce both Lemons *and* Oranges but would only take up one tree-space (though it would yield less than a dedicated lemon and orange tree would each yield?). This will let you play "wide" in limited space of the greenhouse (producing a small amount of a wide variety of outputs) rather than playing "deep" (a large output of few varieties).
I want to thank you for making these videos and the game, I'm not in the best mental place rn and this video gave cheered me up a bit and gave me something to look forward to. Once again thank you and I'm very excited to see where this channel and game goes.
Im excited to buy this game, i've been following you develop chef RPG and I'm so excited to play it!
Brilliant addition. I love the idea of giving the player limited space to grow so they focus on what will be best for the restuarant.
I just love the art work. Can't wait to play it myself. Don't push yourself very hard and don't release game too soon, this kind of games need to be fully developed.
It's so awesome seeing your thought process and I love the aesthetic of Chef RPG. Thanks for sharing!!
i’ve been here since the first video you posted and now i’m seeing your chef rpg all over gaming tik tok and youtube upcoming recommendations. i feel so proud of you even though i don’t know you. i can’t wait to buy this game, the pixel art is outstanding and you keep improving your own style. your game is already on my top tier art styles and this comes from an art student :) thank you so much for sharing your process and i hope you’re having a really good time on this project.
It not only looks beautiful, but I think you made some very good design decisions in terms of quality-of-life. For example, knowing how long a plant will take to sprout, as well as having the box around each seed let you know whether something is a plant, bush, or tree, is a very good choice~
Always a highlight of my day when a new devlog pops up from you. The way you explain stuff is almost zen. So looking forward to game release. For now just the next devlog.
I am so excited for this game! You could add a hose that can spray a larger area of the map at once, or a sprinkler system you can spend a lot of money on that auto waters the whole greenhouse every morning at 6 AM or something like that.
these videos are so cool! i love how you go over your thought process and what you plan to do. you consider the weaknesses and reflect on what could be done better, which is really inspiring. seeing behind the scenes with the animations and code is really interesting since i havent seen much like it. i hope to be able to work on a big project at this level one day. thank you for the videos and the hard work, i hope development goes well and really cant wait to see future growth. good luck! 💪✨
Great progress! 🎉 One idea to further connect farming and restaurant gameplay: Maybe the player could grow flowers or pot offshoots to then use as decoration objects in the restaurant. 😊
I was thinking about that! It would be wonderful to have that!
amazing Stylized art, great concepts, I hope this game becomes big honestly would grind the heck out of this game.
To add variety of trees you could build them out of layers of sprites and generate the tree procedurally with those sprites. There could be a trunk that has a random sprite, maybe random scale too, and foliage sprites that would randomize the sprite, amount of sprites, offsets to those sprites and their layer order. Use formulas to generate those values based on a random number called a "seed" (pun not intended, that's what its called) generated when you plant the tree and store that seed with each tree. For example, if you have 3 trunk sprites and your seed is a random number between 0-1, trunk sprite = seed * number of trunk sprites (floored to get rid of decimal numbers). Foliage number = seed * max amount of layers you want + min amount of layers you want. Do that for each value and you have procedurally generate sprite trees.
Water sprinkling system for later in the game you can buy/craft to put into the ceiling of the greenhouse. I can't wait to play this game!
This is genuinely one of my most hyped games of the past decade. Keep up the good work.
I'm excited that you said "final stretch of development" ^_^ Also been enjoying your timelapse videos whilst chilling before bed. Keep up the excellent work!
OMG! I'm so exited for this to drop and being able to play. Don't want him to rush but I'd love to play it already!
I think the greenhouse is a great idea because irl, some restaurants have a small garden or a greenhouse where they grow herbs and easy things with short shelf life like tomatoes and greens such as lettuce and spinach. So I think something like that would be really dope and have to hunt/forage/buy/help villagers for the other ingredients
Would absolutely love to see some herbs implemented. Not generally a part of farming-oriented games, but highly relevant to a cooking-oriented game. Could also be relevant to the brewing aspect, as things like gin, absinthe, and bitters are highly dependent on their botanical components.
Amazing work, and I love the aesthetic of this game! If you dont mind though i would suggest to avoid the refilling mechanic for the water can, as I dont think its particularly interactive or fun and could make what is ultimatelly a side activity of the game somewhat clunky. If you wanted to have a sense of progression with different tiers of watercans (not sure if the different sprites you mention are for that or simply aesthetical) I would much rather go for giving them the ability to irrigate more plants at once rather than having a higher water capacity (again, it wasnt exactly clear to me what the other watercans were meant to do , but I hope these coments were usefull eitherway)
Keep up the great work!
Your game looks INCREDIBLE, i cant even believe you ponder about finding another artist to redo the trees etc., they already look so elaborate and detailed! Really psyched about your game, super looking forward to experiencing all the beautiful pixels for myself. We are so blessed out here you keep updating us with your devlogs. It's so fascinating to follow your workflow and impressive to see how you just pixel ahead from scratch. Thank you!!!
Looking great! Gonna agree with some people here that you definitely need a way to no longer have to manually water. Whether hiring someone, sprinkler system, etc. Watering every day would just take too much time away from the Chef’ing and the RPG’ing IMO
One thing that I used to love while working in a restaurant was seeing all the restaurant staff-both front and back of house-throw together things from the kitchen's pantry, or use common ingredients and sauces to augment their packed lunches. Some of the best food I've ever eaten was when the sous chefs were just messing around, using up leftover components of that day's dishes that would have otherwise been thrown away, and ingredients that had too little left to be repackaged and stored.
The bartenders were given liberty to sometimes mess about and invent or remix their own drinks, some of which actually got on the official menu.
It would be a nice feature to include in the game. (sorry this comment is late! I'm binging the playlist again)
Happy to see more advances and hear about your experciences with them. This game is full of love.
BTW the idea of planting wherever you prefer, considering if it will fit in the spot, it's fantastic and allows players to spread creativity.
Your dev logs are my fav way to unwind before bed, I just cozy up and watch the amazing art
Something i think would be cool is a composter, sometimes you can be full of objects and items that you don't want, and simply throwing them away makes all your work worthless, that's why having a composter like the one on minecraft, that as you fill it when you reach the top you would earn a fertilizer. Something I miss in all farm games are worms, worms are super important to develop a vegetable garden, it would be nice if on rainy days we could dig the earth and find worms put it in the greenhouse to make the soil more fertile, worms could be used on plants so that when they grow larger they produce more items, because to be honest it's really annoying when a game forces you to farm the same resource for hours, instead of giving you ways to improve your current production.
Composter could work! I might add it. Runescape has a compost bin for farming with similar mechanics to what you described. Thanks for the comment!
Why are his devlogs so chill and relaxing
Seeing this game grow from early on, I'm always so happy with these uploads
I think instead of using sprinkles, you could add a water irrigation system that doesn't take space of the farm, as it's already very tight, it would also be more "realistic". Loving all the progress
I can't even describe how hyped I am for this game.
Since you can only plant in the greenhouse, I think sprinklers could be a greenhouse feature. You could upgrade the greenhouse to have a sprinkler system that automatically waters all the tiles instead of having to manually place several sprinklers around the place.
the roots are a cool idea. i like the idea of each plant giving their respective roots, something that could be used for teas, or as an ingredient, etc. like orange root tea for example. i think it's a fun way to inject some creativity into the game, even if it's not really something that would taste good in real life. it gives the world some extra character, instead of being a 1 to 1 mirror of the real world. like stardew's ancient seeds. also opens the door for more traditional root foods like ginger.
i also think it'd be a cool way to let you make stuff like rootbeer, maybe with some interesting twists by adding different plant roots. like strawberry root rootbeer, etc
Great as always! You could perhaps:
- Add a grinder to make spices for (Peper, Cumin, Dill etc).
- Make certain foods expire. Perhaps a system where you get more points/exp the fresher the ingredients you are using?
- Add a FIFO system. Extremely important when working in a kitchen.
- A freezer/fridge system. Perhaps with icons above items that are about to expire?
I had more ideas but these are mostly related to what you can farm! If you have more questions... I have been a chef for years so I know the ins and outs.
Some of these ideas might or may not translate well to the game. Good luck!
The game looks fantastic so far. I love the addition of a greenhouse as opposed to just a plot of farmland. I've found that one thing that can make gameplay more tedious and less fun is how long it takes to water everything, especially if you're mainly planting single-square plants. Maybe the watering can could be upgradable, but instead of just getting a better watering can, you can get a hose or a sprinkler system that waters multiple plants at once. I think it would make sense for a greenhouse to have or be able to get overhead sprinklers.
i could see the sprinkler system being a permanent upgrade you could earn by a quest--or gathering enough materials and currency to have an npc install them in the greenhouse! that way players can speed up the farming process by eliminating the time needed to manually water their crops. then that new free time can be used elsewhere and they would feel rewarded for the hard work put in to earn the sprinklers.👍😁
A couple of ideas for farming specific to a chef game: 1) composting leftovers: not sure how fun this would be, but it would be unique. 2) Getting a "farm-to-table" bonus to dishes cooked with local ingredients
Love the idea of a greenhouse! Maybe if we could upgrade the greenhouse, having sprinkles from the top of the greenhouse coming down to water the seeds every day would be even easier/take less time for farming. Just a thought, can't wait for the game to come out ❤
I'm so happy to see the game is still being developed. I can't wait to dive into this!
OMG, this game looks absolutely amazing. It has everything I like: cooking, growing, socializing, discovering, hunting, gathering. the atmosphere looks magnificent and so alive. I can't wait anymore, I hope the game will be released soon. Congratulations for your work, your ideas and the way you realize them. that's wonderful! I'm so hyped!!!
Thanks! Will still be a while unfortunately, but we've also got some more cool stuff planned :)
OMG I'VE NEVER CLICKED A VIDEO SO FAST!!!
I love your videos and your game and how you incorporate elements of other games that make them fun and also consider factors that might make a game become boring or hinder gameplay to make your game more enjoyable and improve the player experience! You're probably one of my favorite gamedev youtubers and I can't wait to play the finished game someday 😁
Looking at the pixel art designs, they are great you managed to make them diverse and varied without being cringe or feeling like "unique and special Tumblr style". Great job.
You can feel the personality and they look "realistic" without making them ugly or putting a hideous nose on them. It's very nice to see that.
the art is absolutely amazing wow simply just wow. I don't think many understand how hard it is to make pixel art look this good. Every asset I've seen just perfectly fits the vibe of the game and the style is always so consistent huge props man.
Another based update. I really like the approach of having a greenhouse for farming instead of a huge field so that we can focus more on the core gameplay which is the restaurant management side and not get overwhelmed.
A suggestion I’ve had while looking at these devlogs: how about a dress code for staff in your restaurant? Like if it’s a tavern maybe it has a very relaxed dress code or none at all, but in a high end restaurant, you must have uniforms, tied up hair and a certain level of professionalism to how staff look. I’m not sure, maybe it’s a little unnecessary, but I thought that it may add to the desired atmosphere of a restaurant that the player wants later into the game. PS, I’ve loved seeing the progress of Chef RPG, keep up the good work!
Every new update to this project is so exciting! The idea of digging up roots for your restaurant is so fun and I just love the depth that I've seen in each aspect of this game
I've always wanted to play a restaurant game where I can grow my ingredients. I've always wanted to see varying degrees of quality associated with certain dishes when using high-quality ingredients. Having the option to manually pick from plants and drag the fruits into a basket as well. An incentive to do that might be higher-quality ingredients? Doing this over and over again could be unfun so there'll need to be some considerations. Just some ideas I've thought about. This looks to be one of my most anticipated games. Great work!
This is incredible. So happy UA-cam sent me your way. Cant wait to play the game! Just the art seems like its worth it at this point
I always enjoy seeing these dev vlogs and I look forward to the game's release.
Loving these devlogs, thank you for sharing them with us.
As for suggestions, I think in most farming games I've played, flowers in particular doesn't serve a lot of purpose except for looking pretty, or becomes just another one time cash trade, but not as exciting as vegetables for some reason. I think if there was a way to implement having different flowers attracting specific pollinators, a beekeeping system, or even a system to keep the flowers as decoration inside houses forever would make them a lot more exciting to grow.
I love these devlogs so much! really just makes me want to play the games even more, more devs definitely should do these more often
Just found out about your game, and now I need this so much. Good luck with the process, your presentation style is top notch.
i bought the game 2 days ago and finding out theres a dev log today cuz i didnt know how to unlock the greenhouse is so cool worth every penny i hope you get all the success you deserve
Working on my own cooking-related game and feel as though the odd rare mutant species might make things interesting (e.g., *extra-spicy* peppers, or something like that) - love your work on Chef RPG so damn much so far!! Thank you so much for the videos!!
SO fascinating to follow your dev log videos. I've started working on my own game and when I'm feeling low sometimes I watch these videos and it's refreshing and inspiring.
You can add condiment crafting, based on seeds and roots like having coriander seeds, and use other condiments to make things like garam masala, same with roots, you can also use roots to replant some crops just like in real life, since not all crops give seeds, and in case you wanna use the seeds you get to make condiments, you can use the roots to make more crops (you will have to make the root drops lower). Also make tea from fruits and things like that
For the culinary aspect of growing ingredients, harvest timing is super impactful. By providing the player an option for early or late harvest to impact ingredients/flavors you could incentivize players to invest in proper harvesting of plants to bring out the best flavor of a dish or drink. (Think early harvests for baby spinach, olives used in olive oil, or certain grapes used in wine vs late harvest spinach being bitter or ripened wine grapes changing the flavor profile.
I love the flowers!! I wonder if we are going to have some vanilla haha!! I think adding the path around for the main character to work is awesome! I really love whenever you drop a video. Thanks!!
Watching these have become a highlight overall. I love watching the process! I genuinly can't wait for the game. As for cool game features maybe bees? Honey and Wax could be useful for cooking and crafting. Plus there could be an inherant benefit of bee being around plants to help incerase their growth. Perhaps there is only bee box that can be made avalible to avoid this passive increase from being the best way to improve plants passivly. but it could be cool to collect honey and have that be used in dishes to improve them or for desserts and such.
First time watching one of your videos and I loved it, I'm going to watch them all.
I don't know much about your game yet (and as you said, it's not a farming game) but I wanted to contribute some possible ideas or inspirations:
1) plants would need certain conditions to be planted, grow and/or bear fruit. Like an ability/skill, acquired knowledge, stat treshhold, environmental condition (specific soil, temperature, light, humidity, etc), pollinators.
1.1) Super specific and esoteric conditions for some plants would bring diversity to the greenhouse, such as: >It needs to be watered with a different liquid (alcohol, milk, blood, honey, acid, etc.) to grow. > A carnivorous plant that needs to be feed meat. > Underwater. > Darkness. > Away from other plants (or next to a specific one). > Need music
If your game has magic: > Only grows on magic crystals. > A spell. > Consume Souls (need to kill something or destroy a "soul stone" ).
2)If ingredients have tiers, farmed ingredients could have a higher quality, possibly scaling with the character's ability.
3) Combining the two previous suggestions, conditions could also influence the speed, quality and quantity of ingredients produced.
3.1) A plant could, under different conditions, produce different types of ingredients. Like a spice flower when dry or a fruit when moist.
4) The greenhouse could be the ideal way (or the only way) to have a supply of some of the rarest ingredients. Example: planting and producing a spice that can only be acquired through an NPC merchant who appears once a year.
5) Late game, have skills and techs to automate the most repetitive work, in the form of machines, employees or magic (if you have magic).
6) Bees to pollinate and produce honey?
7) Dangerous plants that make it necessary to take specific precautions when dealing with them. Such as poisonous/hallucinogenic/stinking plants, thorns, attracting pests, weeds (the plant spreads if not contained), kills nearby plants. Even effects that could cause town events such as disease spread, invasive species or some kids that sneak inside and eat the funny looking mushroom.
8) Improve Strains? (again, it's not a farming game. But suggesting it doesn't hurt, maybe a future dlc?)
Change the conditions that the plant needs to germinate/grow/produce ingredients. Improve the speed, quality and quantity of ingredients produced.
Change the type of ingredient produced.
Game looks amazing. So lively, beautiful aesthetic.
Just wanna say, been watching this series from the very beginning and im getting more and more excited each video you bring out about this game. Keep it up and cant wait get my hands on it
The idea of a watering system could work but because of the area provided, it could push the game further into farming Sim territory. It could be good to implement an irrigation system that connects to the tap - like laying a hose with holes in it down the grid - so you still have to water your crops but you can do it all at once. Complex farming could involve planting all the crops that need heavy watering in one place and the ones that don't need regular watering in a different zone that won't be overwatered (which could come with consequences like rotting plants or worse quality in ingredients). Love the series, keep up the great work!
Every update gets me more and more excited! Can’t wait to finally get my hands on this game
I’m SO excited. The funding was the most money I ever spent on a developing game and it was the most excited I ever felt! Thank you so much for your updates.
As a creative, I appreciate getting a peek behind the curtains and how you arrive at your design decisions! Keep them coming :)
I'm extremely excited for this game to be released, I already have it wishlisted in steam. I can definitely see myself sinking lots of hours into it especially after watching your dev blogs.
Maybe In a future update after release you could add different plants to make beverages. It would be so cool to plant coffee beans for coffee, or tea leaves for ginseng, green or even matcha tea all from scratch. It’s also pretty versatile as most tea leaves look pretty similar!
As someone who was following you from the very beginning, I'm really proud of you!!! Your game looks like it's gonna be something else!!
Im still waiting for this game ❤ glad youre still continuing with this
I seriosuly gotta say I LOVE the devlogs! They're so interesting to watch and it just makes me SUPER excited for the game, aswell as giving me inspiration to do my own creative stuff!
Keep up the amazing work!! :D also I love how the greenhouse turned out! Just in general, everything looks so wonderful and I love how it's turning out! . Really am excited for the game haha
Thanks for the kind works :) Excited to show the final game
I’m looking forward to this game so much!! I love cooking games and cozy pixel games but you rarely see many cooking games that can do both! The art is surly stunning and the world looks so lively! I can’t wait to see interactions with NPCs too! I think this game would really benefit from something like a friendship system and romance options to really make the player feel immersed and make the world seem more alive!! Keep up the good work! :)
this is my first video im seeing of yours. As a long time fan of life sims like stardew and habbo im so excited for this. I can tell just 3 mins in how much work you have put into this and i cant wait to play it!
I think that you could add a little box or table that grows herbs where the water is, like a long rectangular planter, or a smaller one, but that gives you X5 mint so you don't have to take up space in the dirt and it isn't a bothersome activity getting herbs for a recipe, also it would be realistic, usually when you harvest herbs you take a few leaves from the plant and wait for them to regrow so you can take more
It would be cool if you could grow herbs and small plants in pots on the window, like thyme, basil, cherry tomatoes etc.
here some suggestions:
-i notice that when you walk behind a tree, the character visual is obstructed by the tree, maybe change to when a player walks behind an object or a tree it will be "see through".
-what if to unlock the green house, you need to max friend stat with april so that she will be willing to sell the green house for you. after befriending her, grind a little of money to buy the green house.
-option to upgrade the green house space (option to make it bigger or maybe add another floor).
-ability to grow herbs and spices.
-add a trellis decoration for vining plants like grapes.
-ability to grow flowers which can be used to decorate your restaurant or sell to a flower shop.
I'd suggest for the watering issues would be adding them to the level starting with ground water where trees never require water again and will occasionally water the smaller plants. Next is a greenhouse upgrade that lets you enable ceiling sprinklers.
I'd also add to have special guests have access to the greenhouse like wedding events or simple gathering or just the occasional cuppa tea
Greenhouse upgrade suggestions for farming mastery...
- Hydroponics upgrade: adds overhead sprinklers, automatically waters all squares once per day
- Composite Soil Upgrade: food waste from restaurants is utilised to produce higher quality ingredients which boost meal quality
- HPS lighting upgrade,: installs roof lighting allowing plants to get light over night, decreases grow time by 1 day for slow growing plants
- Humidity control upgrade: adds a visual slow spinning fan to the back wall for improved c02 ventilation control, plants produce slightly increased yields
- Green thumb skill / reward: indicators for plant grow time and quality revealed to player
Love your develogs. They've helped me on my game. I hope you continue to do pixel art tutorials/videos after your game launches.
Take your time with this! It looks amazing so far but taking all that extra time for the extra 5-10% of polish will really make this game shine as bright as Stardew. Super excited to play
the greenhouse seedbox is such a good idea. Love the video. Kickstarted this gem a while ago and excited to play.
Today is a good day, Pixel Architect posted a video
Discovered this game thanks to sharks walkthrough. Very cool and look forward to following this project along. Looks great!