Illustration by Michael DeForge
Yes, Chef!
Nico Ailani Carlson, Evelyn Yang, Kavika Sharma, Haoyang Li, Adriana X. Jacobs
Nico Ailani Carlson, Evelyn Yang, Kavika Sharma, Haoyang Li, Adriana X. Jacobs
+In one or two sentences, describe the main themes present in your game.
Yes, Chef! is a competitive cooking card game that is played between 3-5 rival chefs who are all vying to be the top dog in a busy and diverse kitchen.
+What was the inspiration of the game?
What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
Yes, Chef! is inspired by our fascination with the fast-paced, cut-throat nature of the restaurant industry as dramatized by competitive cooking shows and dramas (e.g., Top Chef, The Bear). Our shared concern for food waste, appreciation for global cuisines and the cultures that create and host has informed our game design at every step of the way.
+Were there difficult moments when developing the game? What led to those difficult moments? What did you learn from it?
We got caught up optimizing and streamlining the game as we started to near our deadline, which is great when your goal is to make a presentable project, however somewhere along the way we skipped over some risks we could have made to make the game more interesting. Now that we are on the other side of the deadlines of a class, we can take those big risks and iterate until we find what really makes our game sing.
+Were there features you had to remove, and if so, what were they and why were they removed?
In the first version of Yes, Chef! the “actions” that accompany the dish cards were separate cards that were drawn along with the selection of dishes players had to complete. This gave these cards a lot of power, while also diminishing the role of the dish. Some of the feedback we received highlighted this as a negative aspect of the game, how the completing of dishes began to feel mechanical, disassociated from the dishes themselves and the broader narrative of cooking.
+Talk about your teammates! What was everyone's role?
Everyone participated in everything! We were so pressed for time we couldn’t really afford to really specialize as we were constantly working around each other's schedules and fitting in work with random permutations of our team. As luck would have it, we are all quite capable generalists!