IAN O'FLAHERTY
GAME INFO
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
GDD
NUMERICS
ITCH.IO
Dark Rolls is a Soulslike meets cooking game set in a cosy, gothic and hellish environment. Players can gather ingredients from defeating enemies and combine them into various recipes. Using their magical oven, they can bake these recipes to receive new powerful weapons to tackle even bigger foes.
This project was a submission for Grads In Games' Search For A Star Competition and made finalists. The brief was to design a game/mechanic around two concepts that don't usually go together in games. I picked Soulslikes and Baking.
Type Of Game: Soulslike x Cooking
Roles: Designer / Programmer
Engine: Unity C#
-
Core Design
-
Numeric Design
-
Level Design
-
UI Design
-
Creating and maintaining a Game Design Document
-
Creating a video pitch using Premiere Pro
-
Developing a prototype
DESIGN PROCESS
why i wanted to make it
The idea originally started because of a few puns I made to some friends. However, the more thought I gave it the more I started to feel like it would be an interesting challenge to combine the art of baking with Soulslikes.
I really felt like there was a connection between the concepts. Both involve improvement through repetition. In order to truly master a recipe you must bake it over and over again, similar to how a player would have to learn a boss' attack patterns. I also noticed that in both practices, timing is an essential factor.
workflow/process
I had 10 weeks to complete this project. It was a tough challenge balancing this project alongside my university work, so my planning had to be really solid to ensure that I didn't fall behind in any area.
I decided to work on this project for a few hours a week, dedicating each week to a specific goal.
I used Notion to split these weeks up into sprints, creating tasks for each milestone. This made it really easy to track what was done / what needed to be done.
DESIGN PILLARS
PLAYER MASTERY
Players should feel themselves improving as they progress, whether its learning a difficult boss' attacks or learning the best recipes for weapons.
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
How a player manages their resources is extremely important. How efficient they are in managing their stamina, ingredients and baking times should be constantly tested.
COSY GOTHIC
The game should combine the gloomy, gothic and mysterious nature of the Soulslike genre with the warmth and cosiness of baking. I want players to feel in an unfamiliar place yet still have that vague feeling of familiarity.
FAVOURITE FEATURES
My favourite piece of design in this project is the baking system. I love how it manages to link both the genres chosen and keep key elements from them both.
I particularly enjoyed designing the baked weapons. Using baked goods as an inspiration for weapons design is something I have never done before but it was a really fun challenge. I think I successfully managed to make a diverse range of weapons with different styles too. My favourite weapon was the Doughrang, a chocolate donut boomerang that would bounce between enemies.
