Patrick Curry’s Thoughts on Game Design

Welcome to the twentieth game idea of the year.

High Concept:

Family Restaurant is a microcosm game: The entire gameworld consists of a single small restaurant, owned and run by a family: your family. Watch as your restaurant, your family, and your community grow around you as the years pass by.

Platform:

PC

Why it needs to be made:

I’ve always liked the idea of a game with a very small physical space, but a very large possibility space. Family Restaurant would test the limits of this idea, but with the help of proven sim and minigame mechanics.

Description:

So you’ve decided to open a restaurant. You’ve spent what little money you had buying and cleaning up a small building on the corner. Now the real work begins, interviewing people, hiring some help, and getting your restaurant off the ground. As word spreads, you begin to recognize some people from the neighborhood, and before too long you have regulars who you’re on a first name basis.

Your customers are there for the food, and cooking is an important part of the game. Different cooking mini-games are played when your customers order different things. Some items on the menu are cooked via a puzzle-based game involving mixing ingredients just right, but other items are cooked in a reflexes-based game involving flipping items on the grill with precise timing.

As time goes on your relationships with your customers grow. You get to know them, introduce them to each other, and contribute to your community. Watch as a couple meets for the first time, goes on dates, and then eventually gets engaged right in your restaurant. The game isn’t just about good cooking, it’s also about good people and good times.

Why it will be fun:

Cooking is a pretty fun game to play in the real-world, so why not in a video game? Of course you wouldn’t get to taste the fruits of your labor directly, but watching a satisfied customer lean back in his chair with a big grin on his face after a great meal would be very rewarding. But it would be even more rewarding to hear how you helped that customer out in his personal life, or how he always feels like he’s at home when he’s at your place.

Final thoughts:

Family Restaurant isn’t a business-sim. It’s a game about socializing and interacting with people. It just so happens that a restaurant is a fantastic excuse to get people talking with each other, and interacting in a meaningful way.

Thanks to Patrick Moran for his help with this week’s idea. It was great catching up out in LA!