CUISINEER
A super cute and tasty roguelite-flavored dungeon crawler! Explore a lush world and defeat monsters with your trusty spatula and some boba tea, then gather delicious ingredients and bring them home to cook and serve at your restaurant!
Available on both Steam and Consoles!
My Contributions
Play-tested “Cuisineer” to refine the game’s balance and economy.
Communicated bugs to the appropriate teams to fix issues.
Utilized players’ feedback to improve QoL features.
Designed features planned for post-launch content such as Festivals and Sell Equipment.
Managed the development of the post-launch content.
Designed and prototyped UI needed to support those features.
Maintained the game’s official Wiki.
Softwares Used
Festivals in Cuisineer
This post-launch content was handed over to me shortly after I joined as an Intern. As such, I took some time reading the existing design documents to gain a better understanding of what the festivals should encapsulate.
From there, I started making drafts and proposals on what some of the things needed to change or improve are. One of the proposals that was implemented was the Festival Notifications.
The Festival Notifications consist of 3 main parts - Calendar, in-game Mails, and Festive Rush Notification.
Calendar
The calendar should have an overhead UI element to catch the players' attention and encourage them to interact with it. When viewing the calendar, dates of the festivals would be shown, and there is a prominent feedback if the player has viewed the calendar a day before the event.
As part of the festival, customers dining at the players' restaurant will mostly crave certain ingredient/s related to it. Therefore it is critical to notify the players ahead of time that they can plan when and where to farm for those ingredients. Hence, I also proposed to allow the players to see events that are taking place in the next season.
Calendar Popup Interaction Mockup
Calendar View Mockup - Yellow Highlight = Current Day, Coral Highlight = Festival Day
I decided to use a coral-like hue to draw attention and foster a sense of friendliness and warmth, which each festival embodies. I also changed the shape used for the dates to highlight their importance.
To tie things up together, I made sure that was pulsing animation for the festival date when the players opening the calendar for the first time. This again draws the players' attention and emphasises how special that date is.
In-Game Mails
As for the in-game mails, I figured it would be a great chance of pace to have Biscotti sending the players mails with colourful and expressive designs.
With that in mind, I went straight into finding art references and doing UI mockups for both my artists.
I wanted them mails themselves to also have the cozy and festive vibes so I turned to Animal Crossing for my art references.
After some back and forth with my artists, this is how some of the festive mails turned out!
Current In-game Mails!
To also help the players different the normal and festive mails, I decided to reuse the overhead UI icon used in the calendar for the mailbox.
The left image shows the original vision of me wanting to use the festival icons but I figured that it might be confusing for new and returning players. Thus, we went with right image.
Festive Rush Notification
Although there are already lunch and dinner rush periods in Cuisineer, I wanted to push it further and simulate what is it like to run a restaurant on a public holiday - nonstop crowd and food orders. Hence, I proposed to combine the 2 existing rush periods and extend the overall duration - Festive Rush.
To communicate that better to the players, some changes were needed to be made for some of the existing UI assets like the HUD and the rush notification banner.
Above image shows the assets used for regular days.
Notable changes made for festive rush would be the text used, the flag and the clock on the HUD.
Let’s work together!
For work inquires feel free to get in touch with me
Singapore
tohpshn1@gmail.com