Viole(n)t Cooking

by shess

co-authored: @elvendan, @lolita, @yanrishatum

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.17

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.99

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.76

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.62

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.13

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.30

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.73

_"Welcome to Cooking with Violet! Listen, we'll make it this time, I promise. It's a basic stew, how hard can it be? The recipe looks so plain I'm tempted to add a few more ingredients just to spice things up"._

Story: it's cooking time! Violet hasn't been too lucky with her culinary exploits lately, not really. Pots blowing up, houses burning down, chthonic interdimensional beings rampaging in the oven... that kind of stuff.

People asked, people _begged_ Violet to stop risking it altogether, or at least consult with a chef's cookbook first, and... she actually complied!
But not before introducing a few tiny changes into the recipe. Cooking is art, and all art requires courage!

*
> * Keep your cooking pot stable and balanced!
> * Add new ingredients to enhance the taste!
> * Avoid overusing any one particular element!
> * Complete your dish in just two hellish minutes!
> * Play in browser!

*

Controls: mouse only. Drag-n-drop ingredients from their containers and beds into the pot, and watch the indicator telling you how much Fiber, Protein, Tentacle (yep), Fur and Chitin you currently have.

The pot burns different components at different speeds, so you will have to regularly add new ingredients to keep it stable, and the more ingredients you throw in there, the easier it will become to manage the balance. Don't let any one element pass the 50% mark, but if worse comes to worst, open the cookbook and hit reset in the settings tab.

_Additional hints by reading tutorial in-game.
You actually cannot miss it this time, we built it into the narrative itself_ <(￣︶￣)>

*

Code: Yanrishatum. Gamedesign, story: Shess. Art: Lolita. Music, SFX: Elvendan.

Tags: #cooking, #funny, #haxe, #heaps, #short, #tentacles, #witch

Genres: strategy

Tools: Haxe, Heaps

Comments53

Sorrer5 Oct 2021, 02:00

Love the art! Fun style of gameplay, once I got down what I had to do, it became very easy. The best part was for sure the charm this game brings!

binary_coder5 Oct 2021, 02:03

Very polished entry! Animations and UI were very smooth.

Jungle5 Oct 2021, 02:04

This graphics... 5/5

Skyward4d5 Oct 2021, 02:06

The graphics are great!
I'm not able to do anything once clicking the book (Sometimes it is blank, othertimes it fills out, bit in either case I can't click anything). Everything else in the room is greyed out and unclickable.
Is this a known issue, or is there a way around this? Would love to try the game out if there is.

OllieOA5 Oct 2021, 02:06

Nice! This is a really slick and clean entry. Beautiful art, interesting mechanics, and the sound design is perfect. I can see this being expanded upon quite easily, moving between kitchens with different recipes etc.

Great work! Top marks from me.

monkybusines5 Oct 2021, 02:07

Really great art and fun music! I did run into a bug where after starting the dish and going back into the book I accidentally started the dish again and the timer stopped working and I couldn't put stuff in the pot.
Awesome work otherwise! :D

circle5 Oct 2021, 02:08

Do not eat at Violet's house. . .

The art is really pretty. It's really stylistic and I found it extremely appealing. I also found the gameplay to be smooth, and the game's writing was really funny too. The music was subtle, but very nice as well. Overall though, the biggest thing for me in this game is the art. It's one of the prettiest games I've played so far. Just solid stuff.

GuessImLuna5 Oct 2021, 02:09

A bit hard to understand what to do before things go bad on first few runs, but once I got it this was very neat. Audio and art are super well done.

ValidDark5 Oct 2021, 02:11

Fun and interesting game! I enjoyed it. As you play further into the game though and unlock more ingredients it makes it less likely you'll lose. Since the lose condition is one ingredient taking up 50%, so by design it gets easier, the only fix would to make it more unstable I guess, but then the gameplay turns too hectic.
Overall it was fun though. I liked it.

Bearacus5 Oct 2021, 02:12

I was immediatly taken aback by the visuals, top notch! Aswell as the music and sound effect.
The game itself was hectic at first, the pie chart fluctuates way to much and it hard to keep track when i'm initially figuring out what i can interact with AND which type of ingredient they count as, 2 minutes later i'm forcing poor Violet to phase through the kitchen just to keep the balance! Addicting! Good work!

BoxedMeatRevolution5 Oct 2021, 02:12

The music was great!

Jaker5 Oct 2021, 02:12

It took me a couple attempts to realize the ingredients aren't necessarily color-coded to the type. After that, I was able to beat the game. Also, the art and audio is very well done. Good job to the whole team!

Kybre5 Oct 2021, 02:12

The animations and graphics are really well done! I was a little bit confused on my first few runs, but after I got what was going on it felt fun and hectic!

hwaet5 Oct 2021, 02:13

This is excellent! The art is really nice and the music is quite catchy! It kept me hooked while I figured out why my stew ingredients kept quickly imploding. A++ would stew again

HA7Oes5 Oct 2021, 02:13

Artwork is delicate! But after I put the first ingredient in the pot, I couldn't drag other things... Or, when the thing in the pot becomes purple, does that mean I need to try again?

firetwoonenine5 Oct 2021, 02:14

Makes cooking feel exactly as hard as it felt like it would as a kid. And wow, that really is hard...

Basically everything about this game is near-perfect. The art and music are amazing, and the gameplay is addictive. Only real nitpick is that it's a bit difficult to figure out which component is where. Also I know the leaf icon doesn't mean "plant/vegetable", but it felt wrong anyway when you're throwing mushrooms in there.

Fiote5 Oct 2021, 02:14

Amazing entry! Altough the promise was simple (even everything is color-hinted), took me a while to find the ingredients on the screen, lol. The part after the middle was really hard for me lol, can't even imagine how hard the last part would be. Good job!

tinykidtoo5 Oct 2021, 02:15

Really well polished game. The art, sound, and story are all really cool. Just wish I could figure out how to make it to the end. Things keep turning grey and the game seems to lock me out until I reload the page. It happens every time the ingredients go over 50%.

Paul-Maxime5 Oct 2021, 02:23

The graphics are amazing and I love the humor here and there in the book.

However, the gameplay is very lacking. The pie chart isn't clear and doesn't update instantly, the game becomes easier over time, and we can easily win by spamming random ingredients. The reset button is also hidden inside the book, it should appear on the screen when we lose or be bound to the R key.

ToxicHouse5 Oct 2021, 02:26

Great artwork and concept! Found it hard to reset my progress and find meat in the ingredients.

Shessauthor5 Oct 2021, 02:30

Heyo, thanks for your feedback! If you need to restart the game, you can do so from the [Reset] button in the settings menu (the same magical flying book that contained the recipe/tutorial).

They way we decided what ingredient contains what element was a bit random, but... for example, mushrooms are considered to be neither flora no fauna, yet sometimes - sort of both, and this is what we went with.
Also, all things that could even vaguely be connected to tentacles, were.

LDJam user 2351615 Oct 2021, 04:14

The art and interface is gorgeous!!!

Denhette5 Oct 2021, 07:30

Lovely art and a well balanced game, which is fitting haha
Made the dish in a few tries. It actually looked yummy!
Not sure about all the slime in it though.

NeilKleistGao5 Oct 2021, 08:38

Lovely game! I really love this cute character!

WYL TEAM5 Oct 2021, 08:47

The graphics are very cool, cute heroine, it's a pity not to be revealed as a character) The gameplay is not very clear at first, but it seems like it turns out to be played. However, yes, it's really hardcore, time goes by very quickly. If we could make the initial levels easier, it would be better, I think. And the 50% limit is pretty strong, more space could be given.

The game is entertaining and enjoyable!

ProfessorFunk5 Oct 2021, 10:04

Gorgeous art and sound design with a lovely soundtrack. The game was bit buggy for me and the recipe would spoil even when the ingredients were balanced.

Fernando Sydenstricker C.5 Oct 2021, 14:44

5/5 Graphics :D

EvoGenGames5 Oct 2021, 15:20

Very well done! Enjoyed my little time in the kitchen! :-)

Lex5 Oct 2021, 15:41

It took me a while to realize what I had to do. I think a "Game Over" screen would have helped with that.

Shessauthor5 Oct 2021, 15:53

Sorry, the "Game Over" transition was one of those things that didn't make it into the final version ^^
We were literally counting seconds there, no joke.

Forik5 Oct 2021, 17:57

Cool mechanic and i really love games with cooking =D

CloudLunar5 Oct 2021, 21:16

Beautiful girl, nice painting!

5/5 Graphics +1

But the gameplay really needs to be improved. It's a bit simple. And during the second half, I didn't add any ingredients, but the cooking dashboard didn't even move. I don't know if it is a bug.

wobs6 Oct 2021, 00:08

I really love the art in this one, absolutely great job! I really liked the core mechanics of balancing out the ingredients, but I think I ran into the same bug as many others here and the game unfortunately stopped working in the second half :( Overall a very beautiful submission tho, great job! :)

Yanrishatum6 Oct 2021, 05:48

@tinykidtoo Any ingredient going over 50% of the total ingredient sum is a fail state. Since it sets game flag to "not playing", it obviously locks every interaction except the book.

@paul-maxime Pie chart updates near-instantly with some fairly fast lerping, but there is a slight delay between you dropping the ingredient into the pot and it actually being added (it's intentional). I queues the item, and Violet going back and forth is an actual place where it gets added. As for reset, see below.

Because Itch decided to lock out build updates, I was a few minutes late to update the build with some fixes (namely fail state being more obvious as well as some effects that lets you know what objects became interactible). So, no dice here.

cituchi6 Oct 2021, 08:14

the topic is very interesting. Very cool art, good work !!

Muros6 Oct 2021, 08:25

Interesting game. Very cute and beautiful art. Cool music and funny storyline. And in general an interesting idea, although the game is too fast for me. Only a couple of mammoths in the gameplay seemed strange. Firstly, it is not entirely clear which ingredient in the room is responsible for what. Why is Maso a flower and a plant a mushroom? And I also think I shouldn't have put the reset button in the book. It is not comfortable.

Aquilart6 Oct 2021, 08:36

Well done! Kudos to your whole team! Also give hentai onee-san my regards. XD

Enya4546 Oct 2021, 11:26

An insanely fun high octane game. At first I thought it a bit slow but as the amount on ingredients increased the more hectic it became. Great job!

Paulsams6 Oct 2021, 13:19

The art and gameplay were interesting, only the balance was not as high-quality as I went through the game, because I used the same products for almost the entire game, but perhaps if the game is complicated, the player will have to give numbers or percentages of each product in the face).

Taffaz6 Oct 2021, 13:38

The graphics were impressive. Got slightly confused about what ingredients added what, particularly trhe blue mushrooms as I didn't expect them to add green. Once I figured it out I managed to make a nice dish.

JustARoom6 Oct 2021, 18:14

Looks great, sounds great, plays great, a great entry, good job!

coelakan6 Oct 2021, 18:55

Wow, the artwork and music is amazing, the game feels so polished! I would've liked an indicator for when I've game overed since it wasn't quite clear to me the first few times, but overall, you've made a a great game! :)

JamesMiller7 Oct 2021, 07:16

Creative use of the theme! Little confusing as to what ingredients were what type and there being no "game over" screen that comes up. Art, music and sound were all very good.

Zhanna7 Oct 2021, 09:30

The game looks really good and it fits the theme very vell. Though, I find it a bit confusing that the cauldron stops sometimes and the game makes you press a book (where nothing has changed) to progress and sometimes when you drop an ingridient and it's part changes unexpectedly drastically and from the smallest it becomes over 50%

jeremyfa7 Oct 2021, 16:52

The game looks good and well polished, but I can't manage to get past putting the first ingredient. I put tentacles then everything else is grayed out and I am stuck everytime.
Am I missing something obvious?

Bzik8 Oct 2021, 20:19

Amazing game. Thank you for the game, well done!

tjm9 Oct 2021, 16:30

Looks and sounds great, but like some previous commenters it just doesn't seem to work for me? I can't click on or drag anything except the floating book, and all the things that look like ingredients are greyed out and noninteractible. Refreshing the page doesn't help. Playing on Chrome, on PC.

T1h4n9 Oct 2021, 18:29

Визуал приятный. Звук приятный. Композиция у игры в целом приятная. Геймплей - уф. Не сразу даже было понятно, что наступил геймовер. Иногда даже слишком быстро двигаютсяползунки элементов, из-за чего не сразу успеваешь даже понять что уже через микросекунду уже происходит факап. Но общая композиция игру вытягивает.

LDJQ10 Oct 2021, 05:08

I like the art and music.
The gameplay fits the theme.

A more obvious game over screen would be nice, and having to close the cookbook to see the ending is a bit confusing.

Showing icons when you hover over containers would make it easier to understand what each one is for.