MONSTIEUR'S

Technical Designer:

A monstrous cooking game / murder mystery where the dishes served hold the key to identifying the killer.

Each day, one guest will be a murderer looking to kill your other customers
The murderer will order dishes to try to collect the ingredients necessary to create a potent poison
Carefully observe which dishes patrons order to identify the killer
When you are confident in your decision, poison the killer yourself before they can do any more damage to your business
The murder system is carefully designed to always give players just enough information to discover the answer without making it too obvious

Take ingredients from the shelves, drop them in the pot, and serve the result to the right customer
Tactile and interactive. Bounce food of the walls, floor, and ceiling to complete dishes before your customers get impatient
Cooking mechanics are intentionally simple to allow players to focus on the deduction while also injecting a sense of whimsy into the gameplay

The game started with the concept of combining a cooking game with a procedural mystery
The concept of using the ingredients in dishes as clues to the murderer's identity was then developed to tightly connect those two elements of the game
The player's final goal is to find the murderer but all actions are taken through cooking dishes
The mechanics were fleshed out and the game's flow was solidified. Initially, players were given a warning before the murderer made a kill
Finally, playtesting revealed that the warning made the deduction element too easy. Removing it created the final state of the game loop as it is today
The core cooking and deduction systems are tightly interwoven to create a game where both critical thinking and fast reaction times are required to succeed