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Stomach

A cooking horror game where you play as a line cook on a cruise ship. Find all the required ingredients and figure out how to prepare them. No matter what happens, keep cooking.

 

Work in progress.

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The University of Texas Spring 2025 3D Game Dev Capstone Project.

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Details:

  • My role: Gameplay Programmer and Designer

  • Team size: 8

    • Producer/Sound Designer​

    • 2x Programmer/Designers

    • Lead Designer

    • Programmer

    • 2x 3D/2D Artists

    • Tech Artist

  • Contribution: 

    • Gameplay Programming

    • Gameplay Design

Made with: 

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Game Trailer

You. Must. Cook

Premise

You are a line cook who was recently hired for a cruise ship gig where every day you prepare ingredients and make dishes to then deliver to customers. However, each night the ship seems to twist and turn against you, and its walls sound less like they're creaking but instead breathing. However, no matter what you might see, no matter what you might hear… YOU. MUST. COOK.

Pre-Production

This is where Stomach was first born. The first few weeks consisted of brainstorming, sprint planning, and creating prototypes.

Brainstorming

Some initial brainstorming done for the game. 

Mind Map (Left):

  • Core mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics

  • Tools and abilities

  • Game environment

  • Characters

  • Main story

Sketch Map (Right):

  • Visuals

  • Level layout

  • Gameplay

  • UI Layout

Sprint Planning

Discord Channel

  • Team communications

    • Announcements​

    • Asset Requests

    • Intradisciplinary channels

Sprints​​

  • Daily scrum meetings over Discord​

  • Sprint retrospectives

    • What went wrong/well​

    • Goals for next sprint

    • Backlog refinement

Prototypes

Paper Prototype

Core Gameplay

  • Created a paper prototype as a team to visualize the game's mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetic

  • Game consists of the player exploring the ship, finding ingredients, and preparing them in the kitchen within a given timeframe to avoid the monster

Game Jam Prototype

Goals

  • Bring to life the brainstormed MDA

  • Create a working game loop

  • Establish workflows

What I did

  • Contribute to the player package

    • pick up/drop​

    • movement

    • crosshair 

  • Dish ticket

    • tracks completion of dish

  • Game manager

    • timer​

    • loss condition

Deeper explanations of fleshed out components to come in the following sections.

My Contributions

All that I've contributed to the game so far

Minigames

Cooking Station Component

The team of programmers and I worked together to create an abstract class to be used by all minigames/cooking stations. It controls:​

  • Camera movement

  • Item spawns

  • Start and End transitions

  • Required Item checks

Cooking Station Scriptable Objects

  • Set required item(s)

  • Select tutorial dialogue

  • Other required items or components based on minigame needs

Frying Minigame

The goal of this minigame was to invoke a sense of panic and frustration within the player. Regardless of the time limit and lurking horrors, players must remain calm in order to fry their food.​

  • Manual controls

    • Mouse to move the spatula​

  • Pan center

    • Move food to the center of the pan​

    • Color change, particles, and SFX to convey success

  • Frictionless surface

  • Win condition

    • Keep food in the center for 10 seconds​

  • Loss condition

    • Knock food out of the pan​

  • Random force added to food halfway through minigame

Hair Cutting Minigame

This minigame is essentially a gameified horror sequence. The goal of this minigame is to distract players with visual and auditory horror as they play the seemingly simple minigame.​

  • Key press controls

    • Press the matching keys to complete the minigame

  • Visual and Auditory horror

    • The body on the other morgue table rises and moves

    • The player begins to hear breathing from behind

  • Required Item: Scissors

  • Win condition

    • Press all matching keys to cut hair

  • Loss condition

    • None (adding a timer with a jumpscare in the future?)

Boiling Minigame

This is the final minigame in the game. It is the culmination of the most disturbing ingredients found in the game. Not only will this gross out players, but the tentacles constantly escaping the pot stress players out as their time runs out.

  • Manual controls

    • Mouse to move the stirring spoon​

    • Click-and-drag to bring escaped tentacles back into pot

  • Tentacles

    • Constantly move forward to escape the pot​

    • Stunned when in contact with stirring spoon

  • Required items: cut tentacle, hair, mashed potatoes

  • Win condition

    • Keep tentacles in pot for 10 sec​

  • Loss condition

    • Player runs out of time​

Horror Sequences

Under Construction

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