Who wants to bake?

I hope you do, because that’s about half the point of the game we’re working on. (No, the otome one, not the Madoka one. That one has very little baking.) I’m in charge of programming the guts of the bakery sim part of TWCC. My goal is to make a game that is fun to play multiple times, intuitive to understand and deep enough to take time to master, and challenging without being impossible. I’ve decided to write up a synopsis of some of the baking sim features so you can all get excited about it. A lot of features have yet to be implemented, and all of them are untested, so what’s listed may not appear as described in the final game.

(And if you’re one of the people wondering what happened to my Madoka fanfic game, my goal for releasing the next demo is either next Friday or Saturday. Even if all your enemies do is headbutt you, it will be something.)

The goal of the bakery sim will be to get a set amount of money by the end of the year. (Do better than that goal, and you will probably get better endings involving the bakery. We’re still working out how we want that to go.) To make that money, you need to sell some baked goods each day, and in order to sell those goods, you have to bake things that make your customers’ mouths water. And to do that, you have to learn what it is customers want, how to encourage your team of bakers to work efficiently to produce the best items, and hope you don’t mix up salt and sugar.

Recipes: You’ll have access to a few different recipes for cakes, cookies and breads at the start of the game, mostly from cookbooks Elise has inherited from her parents. As you go, you’ll gain some new recipes to bake. The more variety you have in your store, the more people will be willing to check it out and buy something every day. (The cost of ingredients are already factored in to baking a good, so you won’t have to worry about keeping ingredients stocked, it’s handled for you.)

Baking: At the start of each day you will select what things you’d like to bake. At first, Elise will be working by herself, but as time goes on she’ll be able to hire some additional bakers to help work with her. Bakers will have different skills in working with different goods, cooking techniques, and ingredients, so having bakers improve in their best skills and telling your bakers what tasks to focus on will help improve the final quality of your goods. Be careful, because it is possible to completely ruin a batch, and the chance of that happening gets more likely the more you bake and the more tired you get! You can also buy more ovens that will increase the number of goods you can bake per day. (If there’s no room, having a thousand helping hands won’t do anything.)

(I had considered adding a time element to this part of the game, with mixing taking x amount of time and baking taking y amount of time, and similar, and trying to plan around the times customers would be most likely to enter the store. But that ended up being too complicated to plan out and wouldn’t be particularly fun, so a system where everything is baked before any customers come in is what I’m going with. Unrealistic, but more fun. Besides, you won’t see the details of baking and purchasing, so use your imagination.)

Customers: The most important part of any store, bakeries included. Customers will come into your store and look around, and buy the first thing they see that they like. They’ll then eat it, and hopefully enjoy it. If they like it, they’ll be more likely to return and spread the word about how good your bakery is. If they hate it, they’ll probably not come back and might give negative feedback to their friends. Customers will have their own preferences in taste. Some will prefer chocolate chips, others bananas, others still will only seek out breads, and so on.

Your goal is to make your goods as popular as possible with customers. Individual recipes have their own popularity, and the better you do selling those, the more customers that want that particular baked good will appear. The danger is getting customers hooked on only one thing, so make sure you have a variety of goods and put less popular things on sale. Do your best to get your customers willing to buy lots of things, especially your more expensive items. Making goods presentable is also important, customers who aren’t looking for something in particular will be more likely to buy something that looks appetizing!

Cafe: In addition to the bakery, there’s a small cafe in your store. Supply it with individual cookies and slices of cake just like you would the normal bakery, and if your goods are tasty enough the cafe patrons will be more likely to head over to the bakery and buy something to take home with them. Oh, and cafe patrons will be likely to buy drinks, so keep those supplied.

Day-old Rack: Bakeries pride themselves on the freshest goods, but sometimes you can’t sell everything. Anything left over from the previous day is placed on the day-old rack, with reduced price. If you manage it well, you can make your day-old rack the ideal place for bargain hunters to check out.

That’s the basics of the bakery sim! It’s up to you to make this all work out so Elise can keep her family bakery running!

Oh, bonus rejected idea: Buying equipment to use. If you bought better equipment, your bakers skills would get bonuses.

“You have purchased the Golden Mixing Bowl of The Great Lagasse! Your Mixing skill is increased +10!”

CheeryMoya edit: I just realized that this post is lacking in TURTLES.