We've developed an Overcooked clone in 72 Hours!

Introduction

Yeah the title is kinda clickbaity, conceptually we have developed a game like Overcooked. But now since you are here - we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warr - just kidding. Let's get down to business.

This will be a devlog covering our entry for the Ludum Dare 53, which happened in April 2023. Yes, you've read this correctly, April 2023. This is being written over one year later. More to that, when we are coming to the end of this. 

Ideation Process

The theme for LD53 has been "Delivery" and it was a 72h long jam. We've participated as a team of five in that, with 2 artists and 3 developers (quite a good ratio if you ask me). We kicked off the Jam with the "VICKY" Method, a brainstorming process which takes 2-3 hours and in most of our jams, we came up with an idea most of the team felt some hype for. During this process, everyone had some idea with post delivery in mind - controlling something which is responsible for creating packages, stamping and wrapping them and finally delivering them.

Some of my jotted down ideas during the brainstorm phase. I would have loved to implement idea 2, as it was revolving around a warlock, which had to collect imps to satisfy the needs of their pact partner, to keep their own power.

The most voted concept in the end was an Overcooked inspired idea, where you control a roboter, which has to work hard in a warehouse to send out letters and book orders. 

Game Features

I want to save the technical details and how they work together for another Devlog, so I will describe it rather on a "product feature" level. But at first, meet Paul Parceler - the protagonist in our game and the roboter you control:

Levels

The game currently consists of 5 levels, where each level is introducing a new order type. To succeed in a level, you have to hit the amount of orders which are presented to you in the warehouse by a big sign saying "Orders X/Y". You can also fail a level, if you fail to deliver the desired amount of orders in the given time. You'd then have to retry the level.

Each new order type is explained to you verbally by Paul and graphically with some note, where the instructions are displayed.  

Orders

Each order consists of at least 2 order components and they can be put into each other. Some components need the help of another machine to be applied to a order. When talking of order components, there are two main order component types:

• Component Order Objects => A paper, a book, a stamp or wrapping band
• Component Order Packages => An envelope or a carton

Both of these types can be retrieved from Component Trays, for example a box full of envelopes, a stack of paper or a rack of cartons.

A table with papers, it supplies you with infinite paper (where ever this power comes from).

Simplified spoken: A package can contain multiple objects. For example: A book can be put into a carton, a letter can be put into an envelope. To apply a stamp or the wrapping band, you'd need the appropriate machine to do so.

Talking of machines - there are currently two machines:

• Stamp Machine => It applies a stamp to a carton or to an envelope
• Wrapping Machine => It applies wrapping band to a carton

The stamping machine - no stamp = no stamp.

Both machines need their respective component already put into it. After that, the respective component (e. g. an envelope for the Stamp Machine) needs to be put on the machine, so it can apply the stamp.

Now with these Component Order Objects/Packages and machines in mind, you can already create a few permutations on how you want to structure orders. An order itself can only be fulfilled, if the delivered object contains exactly all of the needed components. As already mentioned, there are 5 levels, where each level introduces a new order type, leading to the following:

• Free Letter => Envelope + Paper
• Stamped Letter => Envelope + Paper + Stamp
• Free Book  => Carton + Book
• Stamped Book Order => Carton + Book + Stamp
• Save Stamped Book Order => Carton + Book + Stamp + Wrapping Band

I cannot really remember how we came up with those, but they felt rather "natural" and how we imagined it to work, without being too unrealistic. We could of course add other variations - for example a wrapped letter, or a book in an envelope. The architecture behind it is accessible for new orders, but more to that in another devlog.

Crafting an order

The orders themselves are displayed on an HUD, where the order board contains all current orders:

Each order has a name, an icon, their components and their remaining time in seconds displayed.

To craft an order, you have to put together the displayed components of that order. The stamp and the wrapping band need a machine to be applied, the other components can be simply put on a table and thrown together. The order of this does not matter. You can for example wrap a carton and then store a book in it, which is of course and undoubtedly the way how it is done in real life, right?

After an order has been put together, it can be delivered to the Package Destination. Each successful delivery leads to time being added to the remaining time.

Audio

Something rather new for us has been the integration of verbally explained instructions, which are given at the start of each level. I was giving my best to sound as robotic as I could and it turned out unexpectedly great. We've also received feedback that we FINALLY included some tutorial for our game. 

What was missing in general was self made music and SFX where we had to fallback to some music from already bought asset packs or some royalty free music.

Rating of the entry

Putting all of the game features together and after crafting 5 levels, we were ready to submit our game. It was not surprising, that our game was not innovative, but we still found success in other criteria:

In total there have been 2309 entries and we received 21 ratings. The percentile column displays how many games relatively are rated equally or less than our rating, meaning higher = better. 

In theme we got really close to Top 100 this time, while fun and graphics also had great ratings, the innovation criterion tanked a lot. To be fair, this is not surprising, as this is nothing completely new, besides the setting. 

In graphics we have received our best rating ever in this criterion so far, where we previous had the best place of 575 (Trick or Defeat) respectively the best rating of 3,647 in Deeper well so far. So in both aspects there has been a leap, which is an awesome result and a very good reflection of how our digital artists have improved over time. 

Moving on

Now, the question still remains - what the heck is going on with this devlog, which is being written after the game jam has concluded over a year ago? Well, simply said - I am interested into continuing development here. It has an accessible architecture, to create new orders or new machines. Levels could be created without the need for high complexity, gameplay could be enhanced with also not too complex systems. Some of these ideas already have been thought of during the jam, which we have put as an "extra" to game, some of these came up within the last few days:

• Level Rating (which is already done in a first iteration :P)
• Obstacles
• Moving Obstacles
• Local Coop
• Parallelisation of Tasks within orders (e. g. stamping machine takes some time to stamp, meanwhile you can prepare another order)
• Streak System
• Unlocking components

I almost do not dare to speak it out but I could imagine this being a candidate to be released on other platforms, say Steam for example, as I still want to achieve a released desktop game on Steam, with more content of course. In its current state, I'd personally think of it as a scam if you would have to pay for it.

I'd also really love to hear from you! Maybe you do have some suggestions on other ideas you would have in mind, on some general thoughts or some feedback you'd love to share. Maybe you found a topic, which you would know more about, then I'd gladly be taking this on my list for the next time.

To give a little sneak peek: the next devlog should revolve about more technical details, as for example how the order systems works - how do we spawn new orders? Are there hidden systems? How do you put orders together? What is the architecture? How are the classes related to each other?

And implementation wise, you can have a look at some of my most recent commits in the project:

See ya!

Hendrik